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Mediating effects allow strategic management researchers to understand “black box” processes underlying complex relationships whereby the effect of an independent variable is transmitted to a dependent variable through a third variable. Since the seminal work of Baron and Kenny (1986), advancements have been made in mediation analysis. Thus, literature on the latest techniques for analyzing mediating and intervening varibales is presented. In addition, strategy literature published in the Academy of Management Journal and the Strategic Management Journal between 1986 and 2005 employing tests of mediation is reviewed to better understand how mediation techniques are used by strategy scholars. Finally, implications and limitations of current mediation analysis in strategy research are discussed, and recommendations are provided to strategy scholars examining mediation.

Social entrepreneurship has become a growing field of research interest. Yet, past research has been held back by the lack of a rigorous measurement instrument. Rather than defining social entrepreneurship as an organizational form that a venture does or does not have, this paper agrees with Dees and Anderson (2006) that the construct is better thought of as a set of practices, processes and behaviors that organizations can engage in to a higher or a lesser degree. In other words, the construct is a set of behaviors that any organization can engage in. The purpose of the paper is to develop scale items to measure the construct of organizational social entrepreneurship (OSE).

Drawing on previous literature, this paper first develops and then validates scales for measuring OSE as a third-order formative construct. As its second order, the scale includes three components that capture the heterogeneity of the OSE concept: social change intention, commercial activity and inclusive governance.

The OSE scale is developed and tested through a sample of 182 nascent social enterprises from 55 different countries in the world and then revalidated using a second sample of 263 mature social enterprises from 6 European countries. Results suggest that the scale items exhibit internal consistency, reliability, construct validity and nomological validity.

The scale presented here offers an important new venue for social entrepreneurship theorizing. First, it allows scholars to take a broad approach toward a diverse field and to study OSE behavior in any empirical field in which it may occur. Second, the scales also allow for more focused theorizing. Scholars are encouraged to delve into the antecedents of all three components presented here and to study the different performance effects they have in terms of likelihood to survive, growth rate or potential to achieve financial sustainability.

The paper develops a multidimensional construct for OSE. In particular, the authors propose scale items for three central components of social entrepreneurship, namely, social change intentions, commercial activities and inclusive governance. The scales thus measure the three formative dimensions identified by Dees and Anderson (2006) and Defourny and Nyssens (2010).

The purpose of this paper is to disentangle individual-level gender differences and norm-based gender roles and stereotypes to provide a finer-grained understanding of why female and male entrepreneurs experience different growth returns from their social networks across different national cultures.

This research uses a survey of 637 (278 female and 359 male) entrepreneurs across four nations varying on relational culture (importance of social relationships) and gender egalitarianism (importance of gender equality or neutrality in social and economic roles).

The authors find evidence that male entrepreneurs in high relational cultures benefit the most in terms of growth in revenues from larger network size while women in low relational cultures benefit the least. In cultures with low gender egalitarianism, male entrepreneurs benefit more from their larger social networks than did the female entrepreneurs.

The study presents implications for female entrepreneurs’ behaviors to gain more benefits from their social networks, especially in cultural contexts where relationships are important or where there is equality in gender roles. In these contexts, they may need to develop other strategies and rely less on social networks to grow their ventures.

This research suggests that female entrepreneurs still are disadvantaged in some societies. National policy may focus on developing more opportunities and providing more support to women entrepreneurs as a valuable contributor to economic growth of the nations.

The authors disentangle the effects of gender differences, norm-based gender stereotypes and networks on entrepreneurial outcomes.

Welcome to the fourth volume of Research Methodology in Strategy and Management (RMSM). The publication of our fourth volume provides a source of satisfaction because our original contract with Elsevier only guaranteed a three volume run for the series. The popularity of RMSM led our contacts at the publisher to be eager to continue beyond their original commitment. We are excited about the future of the series, and have begun assembling Volume 5.