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Racial stigma and racial criminalization have been centralizing pillars of the construction of Blackness in the United States. Taking such systemic injustice and racism as a given, then question then becomes how these macro-level arrangements are reflected in micro-level processes. This work uses radical interactionism and stigma theory to explore the potential implications for racialized identity construction and the development of “criminalized subjectivity” among Black undergraduate students at a predominately white university in the Midwest. I use semistructured interviews to explore the implications of racial stigma and criminalization on micro-level identity construction and how understandings of these issues can change across space and over the course of one's life. Findings demonstrate that Black university students are keenly aware of this particular stigma and its consequences in increasingly complex ways from the time they are school-aged children. They were aware of this stigma as a social fact but did not internalize it as a true reflection of themselves; said internalization was thwarted through strong self-concept and racial socialization. This increasingly complex awareness is also informed by an intersectional lens for some interviewees. I argue not only that the concept of stigma must be explicitly placed within these larger systems but also that understanding and identity-building are both rooted in ever-evolving processes of interaction and meaning-making. This research contributes to scholarship that applies a critical lens to Goffmanian stigma rooted in Black sociology and criminology and from the perspectives of the stigmatized themselves.

Inspired by the “responsibility turn” in the broader organization/management literature, the overarching aim of this article is to help scholars working at the gender × entrepreneurship intersection produce research with a higher likelihood of being accessed, appreciated and acted upon by policy- practitioners. Consistent with this aim, we hope that our paper contributes to an increased use of academic-practitioner collaborations as a means of producing such research.

We selected Cunliffe and Pavlovich’s (2022) recently formulated “public organization/management studies” (public OMS) approach as our guiding methodology. We implemented this approach by forming a co-authorship team comprised of a policy professional and an entrepreneurship scholar and then engaging in a democratic, collaborative and mutually respectful process of knowledge cogeneration.

Our paper is comprised of four distinct sets of ideas. We start by describing who policy-practitioners are and what they want from academic research in general. We follow this with a comprehensive set of priorities for policy-oriented research at the gender × entrepreneurship nexus, accompanied by references to academic studies that offer initial insight into the identified priorities. We then offer suggestions for the separate and joint actions that scholars and policy-practitioners can take to increase policy-relevant research on gender and entrepreneurship. We end with a description and critical reflection on our application of the public OMS approach.

The ideas presented in our article offer an original response to recent work that has critiqued the policy implications (or lack thereof) within prior research at the gender × entrepreneurship nexus (Foss et al., 2019). Our ideas also complement and extend existing recommendations for strengthening the practical contributions of academic scholarship at this intersection (Nelson, 2020). An especially unique aspect is our description of – and critical reflection upon – how we applied the public OMS approach to bridge the academic-policy divide.

This paper aims to identify the values antecedents of women’s social entrepreneurship. It explores where and how these values emerge and how they underpin the perceived desirability and feasibility of social venture creation.

Values development across the life-course is interrogated through retrospective sense-making by thirty UK-based women social entrepreneurs.

The findings express values related to empathy, social justice and action-taking, developed, consolidated and challenged in a variety of experiential domains over time. The cumulative effects of these processes result in the perceived desirability and feasibility of social entrepreneurial venture creation as a means of effecting social change and achieving coherence between personal values and paid work, prompting social entrepreneurial action-taking.

This paper offers novel, contextualised insights into the role that personal values play as antecedents to social entrepreneurship. It contributes to the sparse literature focussed on both women’s experiences of social entrepreneurship generally, and on their personal values specifically.

This paper aims to explore synergies between feminist, first nations and queer theories and social, circular and climate entrepreneurship, to build a framework for supporting climate just entrepreneurship.

This paper draws on an extensive qualitative review of the literature on gender justice, equality, social entrepreneurship, the circular economy, climate entrepreneurship and climate action, as well as theorising feminist, first nations and queer approaches to climate action through entrepreneurship.

Whilst climate change is a “threat multiplier” for existing gender (and other) inequalities, gaps remain in engraining gender equality and gender justice principles in social, circular and climate entrepreneurship. Through analysing the literature for critical gaps and theorising at the intersection of climate entrepreneurship and feminist, first nations and queer theories, the authors advocate that a framework for climate just entrepreneurship could play a pivotal role in combining proactive climate action and gender equality measures through entrepreneurship. It could also be a significant step towards ensuring entrenched, systemic inequalities are not perpetuated in nascent and rapidly evolving fields such as the circular economy, social enterprise and climate entrepreneurship.

The literature on climate entrepreneurship is burgeoning, yet key entrepreneurial concepts lack an explicitly feminist or gender lens approach, even whilst being inextricably linked to effective climate action. This paper seeks to rectify this gap by promoting climate just entrepreneurship as a model for effective climate action.

Corporations are confronted with growing demands to take a stand on socio-political issues, i.e. corporate social advocacy (CSA), which affects their reputation in the public. Companies use different CSA message strategies, including calling the public to support and act on the issue they advocate. Using reactance theory, the authors investigate the impact of CSA messages with a call to action on corporate reputation in the case of a company's gender equality initiative.

A one-factorial (CSA message with or without a call to action) between-subjects experiment was conducted by surveying 172 individuals living in Switzerland. The CSA messages were created in the context of gender equality.

The authors' study indicates that CSA messages with a call to action compared to those without overall harmed corporate reputation due to individuals' reactance, which is higher for CSA messages with a call to action, negatively affecting corporate reputation. The impact of the CSA message strategy with a call to action on corporate reputation remains significant after controlling for issue alignment and political leaning.

Communicating about socio-political issues, especially taking a stand, is a significant challenge for corporations in an increasingly polarized society and has often led to backlash, boycotts and damage to corporate reputation. This study shows that the possible adverse effects of advocating for socio-political issues can be related to reactance. It emphasizes that companies advocating for contested issues must be more cautious about the message strategy than the issue itself.

This research paper aims to explore the impact artisan cooperatives have upon women employed in Sub-Saharan Africa. Impacts were detailed using the theoretical framework of social capital theory to demonstrate the networks within artisan cooperatives that connect to greater opportunities for social and economic benefits.

A phenomenological approach was used for this study based upon the shared experiences of women who were leading artisan cooperatives in Sub-Saharan Africa. This study included semi-structured interviews over Zoom with Chief Entrepreneur Founders of artisan cooperatives located in Sub-Saharan Africa. Documents from the cooperatives were analyzed to triangulate the cooperatives’ current projects and efforts.

Three prevalent themes emerged: (1) key partnerships, (2) benefits of the cooperative and (3) change and growth among the women and communities. Empowerment was felt through both economic and social impacts upon the women.

This article captures the perspective of the Chief Entrepreneur Founders and their observations and experiences the women shared with them. Emic perspectives from the women who participate in the artisan cooperatives is the focus of future research.

These social enterprises serve as exemplary models for other cooperatives to provide dignified and sustainable work to impact the lives of women serving in these communities.

This study contributes research on social entrepreneurship within artisan cooperatives. It provides a baseline for further research on the artisan sector specifically for the sustainable development goals of gender equality, decent work and economic growth.

The study aims to understand why women-owned microenterprises (WOMEs) in India experience a lower growth rate, where growth can be represented in increments in the venture’s size or scope. There is no conclusive understanding of the factors that affect the sustained growth of WOMEs in India.

What personal, social and economic factors support or hinder the choice, growth and sustainability of women-owned ventures? What role do institutional factors (government, nongovernment organizations (NGOs), self-help groups and microfinance institutions) play toward the sustainability of WOMEs? The answers to these questions were obtained through a qualitative design by interviewing 30 micro women entrepreneurs from Tamil Nadu, a Southern state of India and one of the largest hubs for WOMEs and their responses were content analyzed using NVivo 12 software.

The findings capture and apply the fundamentals of two key theoretical perspectives, resource-based view (RBV) and self-determination theory (SDT), in identifying the links between the individual, social and economic factors and their combined effect on the sustained growth of women-owned micro businesses. The findings add value in identifying the ingrained cultural norms and traditions and several internal and external factors that support or challenge the growth of WOMEs. This study highlights that the interventions by the government need to be strengthened for the growth and sustainability of WOMEs.

The study’s findings provide suggestions to policymakers, banks, funding agencies, financial institutions and NGOs to design applicable policies and schemes toward the sustained growth of WOMEs.

This study contributes toward a better understanding of the trends in the context of WOMEs from an Indian context. This topic has received little attention in the academic literature. Second, the study’s conceptual contribution is an application of SDT and RBV to understand and categorize the enablers and deterrents in the path of growth of WOMEs, which is a novel pursuit.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the extent to which female and male university students from low-income countries express different entrepreneurial intentions. Specifically, the study empirically tests whether the anticipated financial returns to entrepreneurship versus salaried employment, or the perceived barriers to entrepreneurship exert a stronger influence on the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial intentions.

To test the relationship of anticipated rewards versus barriers to entrepreneurship on gender and entrepreneurial intention, the study uses new data from a field survey in Sierra Leone and employs multiple mediation analyses.

The authors find that the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial intentions operates through the mediator of perceptions of the financial returns to entrepreneurship but not perceived barriers to entrepreneurship.

The authors study intent, not behavior, acknowledging that cognitive intent is a powerful predictor of later behavior. Implications for future research on entrepreneurship in the African context are discussed.

The results from this study can be applied to both pedagogic and business settings in the field of entrepreneurship, with concrete implications for policymakers.

Results suggest that the gender gap in entrepreneurial intentions (EI) for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)- and business-educated students in Sierra Leone is predominantly influenced by anticipated financial returns to occupational choices, as opposed to perceived barriers to entrepreneurship, a more frequently studied antecedent to EI.