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In this chapter, Lituchy, Reavley, and Bryer report on their interviews with women entrepreneurs from the Czech Republic, Poland, and Japan. Eastern European respondents expressed a desire for and the importance of business training. Many who had attempted to get bank loans were refused for lack of collateral or because their business plans were inadequate. Japanese respondents felt that experience was most valuable. They stated that gender adversely affected their financing prospects. Human resources issues as well as dealing with clients or suppliers from other cultures were concerns for all the women. Discussion and implications are presented.

The purpose of this paper is to examine career‐life issues of successful women in the Americas.

A total of 30 interviews were conducted with successful women in Canada, Argentina and Mexico. Themes were pulled from the interview transcripts for each country, analyzed and then compared across countries, looking at universalities and differences of experiences.

The women in all three countries conveyed more subjective measures of career success, such as contributing to society and learning in their work, with Canada and Mexico particularly emphasizing receiving recognition as a hallmark of career success.

This research provides insight into the experiences of successful women in the Americas, which can inform the career development of women in business.

This research contributes to the literature on women's careers, highlighting successful women's experiences across cultures and in an under‐researched area: Latin America.

The purpose of this paper is to compare women's mentoring experience in nine countries within the Americas, and to explore linkages between personal characteristics, mentoring practices, mentoring functions, and consequences of being mentee.

A total of 1,146 successful women are questioned about their mentoring experiences as a mentee: 105 from Argentina, 210 from Brazil, 199 from Canada, 84 from Chile, 232 from Mexico, 126 from the USA, and 190 from three countries in the West Indies (Barbados, Jamaica, and St Vincent).

Most of the women have more than one mentor. Across all countries mentoring practices are more strongly linked to career mentoring function while the age and gender of the mentor are more strongly linked to psychosocial mentoring. Mentoring from the perspective of mentee has the same directional relationship with situational and individual variables, but the significance of those relationships vary by country. A possible cultural difference is detected between Spanish and non‐Spanish speaking countries on the issue of mentoring practice.

The fact that the paper focuses only on successful women in this paper means the findings are not necessarily generalizable to other groups of women or men. The paper is also limited because mentoring functions are constrained to two: psychosocial and career. There may be more functions that mentoring could fulfill for the mentee.

Companies' interest in fostering mentoring among their members, particularly women, should be aware that different mentoring functions are influenced by different factors. For example, formal mentoring programs appear to have a greater impact on career mentoring functions than on psychosocial mentoring functions. To support women in their careers, companies should institute formal mentoring programs; this is especially important in South American countries. Moreover, mentoring programs must be designed to be adaptive since the analyses indicated that there are significant differences by country in terms of many mentoring issues.

In the literature review, the paper finds linkages between culture, mentoring practices, characteristics of mentors and mentees, and mentoring functions, but no evidence that these linkages have been studied with a group of professionally successful women from different American countries, particularly non‐English speaking American countries.

The purpose of this paper is to consider effective leadership in Africa and the African diaspora. This paper reports the results of emic research in Uganda, Barbados, Canada and the USA.

A Delphi technique using open‐ended questions solicited ideas regarding leadership from knowledgeable participants, avoiding researcher bias.

There were differences among the groups on several attributes that made leaders effective. Ugandans suggested a good leader was “honest and trustworthy”; Canadians and respondents from the USA said “being inspirational/charismatic” Barbadians cited “being a visionary”.

Having data for only one African country and the small sample sizes from all countries limit the generalizability of the findings. The results do, however, provide a base of knowledge on which to build future studies on Africa and the diaspora.

The emic approach overcomes the western bias identified by scholars in most African research. Similarities and differences identified provide evidence of the importance of culture in effective leadership. The results provide a basis for developing further research studies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of job demand, job control, and supervisory support on stress among nurses in China, Japan, Argentina, and the Caribbean using the Job demand‐control (JDC) and the Job demand‐control‐support (JDCS) models.

The authors have employed a comparative research design, cross‐sectional survey methodology with convenient random sampling, and a commonly used statistical analytic strategy.

The results highlight that job demand, job control, and supervisory support are important variables in understanding stress among nurses. This has been corroborated in China, Japan, Argentina, and the Caribbean. Based on their findings and what is available in the literature, the authors report that the JDCS model has universal significance albeit it works somewhat differently in different contexts.

This study's contribution comes from its comparative nature, theoretical anchor, its use of one of the most popular models of stress, its focus on a profession that is demonstrably stressed, its use of common measures and an established analytic strategy. The study's findings underscore the cross‐cultural usefulness and application of the JDCS model along with its threshold and substitution effects and limiting conditions.

This project aims to examine levels of career and life satisfaction among successful women in nine countries in the Americas.

A structured survey and in‐depth interviews were used, and a variety of occupations, demographics, and personality characteristics assessed – 1,146 successful women from nine countries in the USA responded the survey: 105 from Argentina, 210 from Brazil, 199 from Canada, 84 from Chile, 232 from Mexico, 126 from the USA, and 190 from three countries in the West Indies (Barbados, Jamaica, SVG).

Results show no differences in satisfaction based on occupation or country and most demographic variables investigated did not have a significant relationship with satisfaction. Age had a small, significant, relationship, with satisfaction increasing with age; married women were significantly more satisfied than single women. Higher scores on self efficacy and need for achievement, and a greater internal locus of control were all related to higher levels of satisfaction. The relationship between career satisfaction and general life satisfaction was stronger in Argentina and Chile that in the other countries.

Extends understanding of professional success and satisfaction, in terms of demographic variables and personality, as well as geographically.

The intent of this cross‐national research is to study the personal and cultural characteristics of successful professional women. High‐achieving women may share certain personal characteristics, beliefs, and experiences, regardless of the countries in which they live. However, every individual is socialized within a particular national culture, and may be expected to share certain values and expectations with other members of that culture.

Over 1,100 professionally “successful women” (including high‐level managers, entrepreneurs, academics, government personnel, and professionals) and 531 undergraduate business students in nine countries – Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Mexico, the USA and the West Indies (Barbados, Jamaica, St. Vincent, and the Grenadines) completed surveys containing two sets of variables: national/cultural (collectivism/individualism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance) and personal (self‐efficacy, locus of control, need for achievement).

There were significant differences in the personal characteristics between successful women and the student comparison samples, with successful women consistently higher on self‐efficacy and need for achievement, and more internal on locus of control. There were some significant but smaller than expected differences in cultural characteristics between national samples.

This contrast of successful women living in the Americas provides new insights for managers of international companies seeking to be gender inclusive.