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The learning objectives aim to provide an understanding of the changing nature of consumer payments and the impact upon both businesses and consumers. This can be achieved by examining the case through the lens of stakeholder theory, which posits that businesses are “responsible … to ‘those groups and individuals who can affect or be affected by their actions.’” Collectively, those groups and individuals are known as stakeholders and they commonly include “customers, employees, suppliers, communities and financiers.” In addition to creating value for the owners, businesses should also consider how they can create value for each of their other stakeholders (Freeman et al., 2010, p. 9). In addition, consistent with the theory of management control systems (Chenhall, 2003), the automatic processing of cashless transactions enables businesses to more efficiently record their earnings, commission payments (if applicable) and monitor cash collections. As all data are captured in an electronic format, they can easily understand their sales and profitability through user-friendly and visually appealing dashboards. This, in turn, enables them to obtain a more accurate and timely view of their business and they can appropriately adjust their operations and strategy as a result of this information. Finally, cashless payments enable more accurate and efficient reporting of information to taxing authorities, which decreases the possibility that the affected parties would underreport income and underpay taxes. This is similarly consistent with the theory of management control systems (Chenhall, 2003) because the improved systems of financial reporting assure compliance with tax laws and regulations.

This case was developed using both primary and secondary data sources. The authors interviewed the participants in London and the secondary data collection used relevant sources from appropriate literature and the popular press.

In London, consumer transactions were as plentiful as the eight million people who lived there. While cash was considered “king” in retail, cash payments dropped by 15% across the UK in 2017, and debit and credit cards became the predominant payment method (Kollewe, 2018). Cash represented only 40% of customer payments and was expected to drop to 21% by 2026 (Lyons et al., 2018). This was likely driven by contactless payments whereby consumers preferred the speed and ease of being able to “tap and go.” As businesses were charged fees to accept credit card payments, many expected that small businesses would insist on cash for small transactions. Instead, some banished cash completely. Insights from two London businesses helped explain why some were dropping cash and completely embracing cards.

This case can be used in a variety of undergraduate level courses to discuss trends in customer payment methods and the decisions of some businesses to completely abandon cash. Some example courses and suggested supporting materials include the following: • Consumer behavior • Entrepreneurial finance • Survey of accounting • Introduction to financial accounting.

New entrepreneurial businesses are one of the key drivers of innovation and economic development. However, one of their greatest obstacles is accessing capital, especially since they are often initially unprofitable and lack tangible assets in the first few years of operation. Since debt financing from banks can be difficult for them to obtain, their capacity for growth can be limited. This case introduces students to Kabbage, a company that reduced the barriers associated with start-up and microbusiness lending by using a fully automated, data-driven platform. Kabbage made instant decisions on whether these businesses should qualify for a line of credit by reviewing its clients’ electronic data, analyzed quickly and accurately using specific algorithms.

Given the applied nature of the case, the data were gleaned from a wide range of secondary sources, specifically popular business press which was verified for authenticity.

This case can be used in a variety of undergraduate courses. Some course examples include small business management, introduction to entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial finance.

Prior research has drawn from entrepreneurial practice to conceptualize a variety of discreet narrative types. Research has also demonstrated that narratives are a practical and useful tool for entrepreneurs in many stages of the entrepreneurial process. This paper proposes a new narrative, shared narrative, and a conceptual model for how entrepreneurs might build such a narrative that is strategic in nature.

First, the authors review the types of narrative and introduce shared narrative as an account that narrativizes both the entrepreneur and relevant stakeholders. Then, integrating theoretical concepts from constitutive rhetoric and value co-creation, the authors introduce a conceptual framework as a three-stage process guide for entrepreneurs to build shared narratives for strategic stakeholder engagement. Leveraging the power of shared roles and salient values as the key to pre-story building process, the intended audience of the story (i.e. consumer, investor) is present from the inception of the story and integral to its success.

The authors assert that entrepreneurs need to adopt a shared narrative approach for strategic purposes. Further, the development of a shared narrative begins at the pre-story process of co-creation, focused on identifying the roles and values entrepreneurs share with their various stakeholders. Incorporating these shared roles and salient values into the entrepreneurial narrative will result in a narrative that is compelling, authentic and adaptable to different stages of the entrepreneurial process and for multiple stakeholder audiences. Post-story, this authentic narrative will result in higher levels of engagement from both the audience and the entrepreneur in the form of reciprocal action.

This paper proposes a new narrative and provides a structured process to support entrepreneurs in building shared narratives for strategic engagement with a wide range of stakeholders.

This study aims to develop insights on how national culture, gender and field of study can influence the impact of entrepreneurship education toward the development of entrepreneurial intention.

The entrepreneurship education project gathered data from over 18,000 undergraduate student responses, spanning over 70 countries and 400 universities. The sample used in this research examined eight countries with significantly different national cultures, while a quantitative analysis of a sample of n = 5,033 responses was performed. Beyond correlation analysis, a hierarchical multiple regression model is implemented for intention along with moderation analysis.

The statistical analysis reveals robust correlations among several entrepreneurial concepts and national cultural indices. As expected, national culture interweaves with all entrepreneurial concepts and more significantly for students of socially oriented disciplines. Gendera and field of the study appear moderators of causal relationships between entrepreneurial constructs. Exerting a strong influence by culture, entrepreneurial identity appears the most significant explanator of intention. Overall, the emergent pattern suggests entrepreneurship is intentional, but in a socially justified and accepted manner closely related to local cultural norms and institutions.

Implications pertain to research for entrepreneurial intention and to educators and educational bodies concerning their goal setting for entrepreneurial programs and appropriate scheduling of effective pedagogies.

The study exploits a large data set from eight countries (Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Spain and USA) which permits systematic quantitative search for the influence of culture on the impact of entrepreneurship education. Cross-national studies of entrepreneurship education and the effect of national culture have been scant in literature – a research gap the study responds to. The inclusion of both developing and developed countries contributes in a novel way to a unique understanding of the influence of culture on entrepreneurial concepts through education.

Against a backdrop of global economic recession, high production costs and increased international competition, the performance, survival and growth of small businesses is high on the global political agenda. However, like many other nations, Ireland is lagging behind in terms of a co‐ordinated approach to the specific challenge of supporting women‐owned ventures, hence possibly reducing their opportunity to act as economic agents. Based on a review of growth‐oriented support programmes for women in business in Ireland, this short viewpoint seeks to identifiy a number of gaps in the current support system and to propose a range of possible alternative intervention strategies that the authors believe can help facilitate business growth.

Using secondary data, a review of the current government support programmes was carried out. Further, evidence obtained through an in‐depth qualitative study of 33 women entrepreneurs in Ireland and Northern Ireland which identified a number of specific barriers inhibiting the development of these firms was used.

The analysis of current government practices revealed that whilst women are making progress in starting more businesses in Ireland, the current statistics indicate that they still tend to start small and stay small. This points towards a need to reassess and understand the issue of growth among women entrepreneurs and, in doing so, develop new mechanisms that can have real impact on growth‐oriented women‐owned firms whilst also respecting and supporting those who choose not to grow their business. The qualitative study identified a number of specific barriers, which hinder the development of their firms. These included financial, regulatory and employability challenges; a lack of management skills and confidence. Motherhood and personal goals were also found to be inhibiting factors for women entrepreneurs.

The paper proposes a number of possible government and personal intervention strategies to overcome the identified barriers. These include encouraging lending within the small growth sectors, conducting a regional skills audit, reducing the administration and paperwork associated with trading and accessing support and develop customised training and up‐skilling designed to meet the specific needs of women entrepreneurs.

The paper argues that government agencies in Ireland must now act on the evidence provided and confront the issues affecting women entrepreneurs.

This extended Editorial outlines the genesis and theoretical interests of the Gender and Enterprise Network from which this special issue of the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research emerged. In the call for papers, researchers were asked to employ existing gender theories to explore entrepreneurship. The theories and empirical insights presented in the five papers are summarised and compared. Key directions for future work are outlined.

Articles in the special issue include cross-national studies, multi-level analyses drawing on qualitative and quantitative methods, longitudinal analysis and feminist research. The Editorial explores methodological challenges, including how to encourage cross-national collaboration, research the circumstances in which entrepreneurship is gender liberating and embed gender theory in research on male entrepreneurship.

A comparison is made of the findings from the papers in this special issue, to draw out wider implications for our understanding of entrepreneurship as a gendered process.

This special issue represents a significant milestone in advancing our understanding of all entrepreneurship as gendered. Its focus on gender theory (rather than on the empirical study of women ' s entrepreneurship) is novel and marks the theoretical direction advocated by the Gender and Enterprise Network. It is hoped that the employment of gender theory in the Editorial and articles will spark the interest, and raise the contribution, of the wider entrepreneurship research community. An agenda for the future is outlined.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impact gendered media representations of entrepreneurs may have on the reality of female entrepreneurship. It analyses the representation of women entrepreneurs in a women ' s magazine. Media representations influence, firstly, whether women perceive entrepreneurship as desirable and attainable, and thus impact the strength and direction of their entrepreneurial aspirations. Secondly, media representations shape how key stakeholders such as bankers or clients view and interact with female business owners, thereby impacting women entrepreneurs’ business relations and opportunities.

The paper reviews research on media representations of women entrepreneurs, gender inequalities in entrepreneurial activity and work before presenting an in-depth qualitative analysis of a magazine series reporting on female entrepreneurs.

The authors’ analysis reveals how the woman ' s magazine in question portrays female entrepreneurship as focused on traditionally female activities and pursuits and as domestically-centred. Relating these findings to evidence on gender inequalities in entrepreneurial activity, the paper raises important questions about the impact of media representations of women entrepreneurs.

The paper demonstrates the benefits of understanding entrepreneurial activity as work and includes analytical perspectives from the sociology of work in the analysis of media representations of entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to develop gendered entrepreneurship theory through a focus on the roles of space and place in the daily lives and businesses of mothers who have configured business around the daily routines of family work.

Through a consideration of the accounts of 29 “mumpreneurs” and using a framework forwarded by Jarvis to understand the geographically embedded “infrastructure of everyday life”, this paper seeks to understand mumpreneurial decision making, choice and constraint.

Spatial factors, in their myriad forms, run through and affect mothers’ different levels of capability and constraint, and thus the (gender-role and entrepreneurial) “choices” that individuals and families make. Placing families in the realities of specific, material locales helps to embed our understandings of these decision-making processes in real places.

This discussion: advances new understanding about how space and place enable or constrain mumpreneurship (in particular) and entrepreneurship (more generally); and provides a lens through which to examine the structure/agency dualism in relation to gendered entrepreneurship.

Employing a feminist relational lens, the purpose of this paper is to explore the work-life balance experiences of black migrant women entrepreneurs, examining the relationship between macro, meso and micro levels of business activity. The paper examines the obstacles raised and opportunities enabled by the confrontation and negotiation between the private and public space.

Qualitative methods are used and the paper draws on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 29 black women business owners in the legal and black hairdressing sectors in London. The analysis of the paper is informed by a relational approach that recognises the embedded nature of business activity in differing levels of social action.

The analysis reveals that ability of the women in the study to manage their work-life balance was shaped by power relations and social interactions between and within cultural, structural and agentic dimensions of small business ownership.

This paper contributes to the literature on business and entrepreneurial behaviour of women by embedding work-life balance experiences of black migrant women in context of relations between and within macro, meso and micro levels. It conceptualises the behaviour of the women in the study in terms of confrontations, negotiations and dialogue between notions of motherhood, femininity, family and entrepreneurship at the societal, institutional and individual levels. In so doing the paper expands the literature on minority entrepreneurship and underscores the interconnected nature of these three levels to produce unique experiences for individual migrant women.

Research and theory indicate that macro-level variables can influence the effects of individual-level factors on the economic behavior of women; however, this has rarely been examined with regard to women ' s entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship has thus far been examined from a gender-neutral perspective. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap by deriving predictions using a sociological model of gender stratification and examining the effects of gendered institutions on women ' s entrepreneurship.

Using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) dataset comprising over 40,000 individuals across 30 countries combined with data from the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI), the authors examined the direct as well as cross-level moderation effects of gendered institutions on the probability of women entering into entrepreneurship.

Results indicated that gendered institutions moderate effects of individual variables on the entrepreneurship of women, suggesting that in theory and research, individual factors affecting women ' s entrepreneurship should be considered within the larger cultural context.

The findings provide additional evidence for the gender stratification theory of women ' s economic activity. Future research should examine alternative operationalizations of the variables, as well as effects of additional gendered institutions.

Results suggest that changes may be needed in entrepreneurship development policies in countries with cultural values creating barriers for women ' s entrepreneurship.

This multi-level analysis is derived from a theoretical framework and helps account for the rates of entrepreneurial activity found among women across many countries.