RIESGOS EVALUADOS EN SUBESTACIONES

The highly complex question of ownership is fundamental in any study on gender and small business (Rosa and Hamilton, 1994) and answering this requires consideration of the precise definition of the term ‘female entrepreneur’. As discussed previously, in this study the entrepreneur is defined as someone who started a business. However, this does not consider the intricacies of the reality of business ownership and this highlights the complexities of conducting research into female entrepreneurship. It has been noted that there have been difficulties in defining women owned businesses and a major problem is the shifting definition of women owned businesses (Mattis, 2004). In fact, the terms female entrepreneur, woman owned business and female controlled business are used inter-changeably in the literature and often without a precise definition. For example, Rosa and Hamilton (1994) criticised the research conducted by Kalleberg and Leicht (1991), Fischer (1992) and Brush (1998) for failing to state how they defined women owned businesses.

Previous research has adopted varying definitions. For instance, Mattis (2004), McClelland

et al. (2005) and Hill et al. (2006) all defined women owned business as those in which

women own at least 51% of the business. Whereas Haynes and Haynes (1999) defined women owned businesses as one in which women own more than 50%; and Moore and Buttner (1997) and Moult and Anderson (2005) defined a female entrepreneur as a woman who owns at least 50% of a business. Whilst Lee-Grosselin and Grise (1990) defined a woman owner manager as owning at least a 1% share of the company and having responsibility for one major management function of the company.

In dealing with the issue of co-ownership Bates (2002) classified women owned firms on the basis of their gender as reported in the Census Bureau data and in the cases of 50/50 male/female co-ownership of a business, ownership was assigned to the owner who self reported working the most hours. In contrast, Watson (2006) attributed co-owned firms to either male or female ownership provided there was only one major decision maker.

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Fabowale et al. (1995) took their analysis further selecting three alternative definitions of the gender of the owner and analysing the data on the basis of each one, firstly analysing firms on the basis of the gender of their primary owner, then on the basis of the majority of owners of the same gender and lastly on the basis of firms whose owners were all of the same gender. As an alternative approach, Johnsen and McMahon (2005) defined a female- controlled SME as one with at least one female owner-manager and no male owner- managers and so excluded all SMEs with mixed-gender ownership. Therefore no conclusion has yet been reached on how best to measure ownership to define the female entrepreneur.

The problem of defining the female entrepreneur is exacerbated by the issues posed by the existence of entrepreneurial teams. In the past entrepreneurial teams have been relatively neglected in the entrepreneurship research (Ucbasaran et al., 2001). Davidson and Wiklund (2001) analysed the contents of a leading entrepreneurship journal for the ten years from 1988 to 1998 and found no articles on entrepreneurial teams. As a result, the conceptual framework that underpins most entrepreneurial research tends to view the entrepreneur as a single enterprising individual (Harper, 2008).

However, emerging research highlights the role of the team in the entrepreneurial process (Harper, 2008) and this supports the concept that entrepreneurs are not a homogenous entity and as such they may display differing patterns of behaviour (Ucbasaran et al., 2001). Entrepreneurial teams are particularly prevalent in the technology sector where Rosa and Dawson (2006) found that academic spin-out companies frequently have complex ownership structures. Thus research into the technology sector necessitates the consideration of the role of entrepreneurial teams.

Prior research has also found that entrepreneurial teams are prevalent in Scotland and a wide scale survey found that 61% of the 600 businesses sampled were co-owned providing evidence that the individual owner manager is less common than the literature implies (Rosa and Hamilton, 1994). Similarly, the Federation of Small Businesses’ survey undertaken with their members across Scotland, reported that 44% of the businesses in Scotland were co-owned (Mason et al., 2006). Therefore the issue of entrepreneurial teams is pertinent to examining entrepreneurship in Scotland.

Furthermore, earlier research has also been criticised for not clarifying if it is comparing women owned businesses solely to male businesses or to mixed gender teams and if they

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have controlled for the impact of co-ownership and for failing to consider the issue of co- ownership (Rosa and Hamilton, 1994). In practice, much research has focused only on comparing male and female owned businesses. The flaw in this approach is that it overlooks the intricacies of the situation and as Chell and Baines (1998) state ‘Simply

excluding mixed gender co-ownership can facilitate the direct comparisons between aspects of male and female experiences, attitudes and behaviours but this is achieved at the very high cost of masking the real-life complexity of gender and small business ownership’ (p119). Moreover, by excluding mixed gender teams the many women

operating in this sphere are rendered invisible and little is known about how men and women interact as co-owners (Rosa and Hamilton, 1994). Thus co-ownership renders it difficult to divide businesses into neat divisions of “female owned” or “male owned” (Rosa et al., 1996).

The arguments against including mixed-gender entrepreneurial teams include Godwin et

al.’s (2006) idea that by partnering with a man in male dominated sectors, the female

entrepreneur will benefit from enhanced legitimacy, access to a larger number of resources and access to a more diverse social network. Therefore these entrepreneurs may have an advantage over the solo entrepreneurs. However, Rosa and Hamilton (1994) argue that the concept of a ‘lone’ female entrepreneur is perhaps too limited and the focus on this may disguise the complexity of business ownership and avoids the issues raised by co- ownership. Moreover, even those business which are solely owned tend to have partners or relatives contributing to the business in some way (Rosa and Hamilton, 1994) or they may be able to access the resources that they require, such as human capital, from their employees (Ucbasaran et al., 2003). Indeed, in practice, the division between the solo and entrepreneurial team may not be so clear.

The existence of mixed gender teams is also of interest as Aldrich et al. (2002) found that in teams that are not spouse or partner relations, the teams show a preference for being of the same gender, with two person teams exhibiting the highest levels of the same gender, with 80% comprised of partners of the same gender. This renders mixed gender teams of specific interest due to their comparative rareness. Aldrich et al. (2002) also noted that it may be more difficult for female entrepreneurs to form teams as there are fewer other female entrepreneurs for them to form teams with. Thus due to the intriguing existence of teams in entrepreneurship it would be remiss to exclude them from the research. Furthermore, the power of qualitative research is that it is able to explore the richness of

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the phenomenon and consider these real life issues, helping to shed further light on the situation.

5.6.1 Family Owned Businesses

The issue of delineating business ownership and the existence of entrepreneurial teams necessitates the exploration of the role of family owned businesses. A wide scale survey of small business owners in Scotland illustrated the prevalence of family firms within business co-ownership with spouses co-owning 37% of the firms surveyed (Mason et al., 2006). However, the role of women in family owned firms has been researched and may be more opaque than in non-spouse entrepreneurial teams.

For example, Marshack (1994) reported that the wives were invisible in the businesses studied and that the husband was the leader and decision maker at work and at home whilst the wives’ role was that of support. Further research found that spouse owned businesses were found to follow characteristically traditional gender patterns, with the women typically working in a support capacity for the business rather than in the business management (Chell and Baines, 1998). Nonetheless, it may be the case that the wives were marginalised and categorised as the support mechanism in the family businesses, when in fact their roles were more significant than that but their contributions were undervalued (Mulholland, 1996). Therefore although the wives may not take on the owner-manager role, they may have powerful leadership roles in the business (Hamilton, 2006). In these cases, women’s contributions to the family business are in effect, masked by co-ownership (Shaw et al., 2001). These findings illustrate the difficulty in gaining a clear insight into the role of women in a spouse owned businesses. As such, family owned firms present a more complicated research proposition with Steier et al. (2004) reporting that family firms may be more complex than other firms and Chrisman et al. (2005) emphasising their idiosyncratic nature.

Hence the role of women in spouse owned business is complicated and it may be difficult to clearly delineate the role of the woman in the business. This makes it extremely difficult to compare the experiences of women in spouse owned businesses to those of other female entrepreneurs. Therefore the precedent of Watkins and Watkins (1984) and Moult and Anderson (2005) will be followed and husband and wife owned businesses will be excluded from the research.

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However, in light of the lack of research into mixed gender entrepreneurial teams (Rosa and Hamilton, 1994) and their comparative rareness in the sphere of entrepreneurial teams (Aldrich et al., 2002) non-spouse male and female entrepreneurial teams will be included in the research. Again this follows the precedent set in Moult and Anderson’s (2005) research. Excluding husband and wife teams whilst including mixed gender teams may appear arbitrary but research has found that non-spouse teams are more likely to consist of people who have skills and experience of their chosen sector (Chell and Baines, 1998). As such, these people have chosen to go into business together and it is more likely that the female entrepreneurs will have a leadership role in the business. Moreover, the qualitative nature of the research will enable a clear insight into the female entrepreneurs’ role in these partnerships to be provided, helping to add to the lack of research that considers this real life complexity.

Thus for the purposes of this research the female entrepreneur will be defined as a woman who launched a business. This is because the start-up period is crucial to the research as it is imperative that the entrepreneur founded the business so that they can describe their experiences of their entrepreneurial process. Hence, only entrepreneurs who established the business rather than those who bought it or inherited are included in the research. This follows the precedent set by Carter and Allen (1997) in their study on the determinants of growth in women owned business.

Whilst the female entrepreneur may have started alone or in an entrepreneurial team, if this team is with a male entrepreneur then it is a pre-requisite that the female owned at least 50% of the business at the start-up stage and women in spouse owned businesses will not be included. The female entrepreneur must also have an ongoing involvement in the business to ensure that she has experience of the entrepreneurial process. Thus to be included in the research the entrepreneur must be a driving force in the business, illustrating the ethos of ‘without whom the business would not exist’ (Bruyat and Julien, 2000).

To summarise, to be included in the research the female entrepreneurs must:

 Have founded a business in Scotland;

 If operating in an entrepreneurial team, be in a non-spouse team and own at least

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 The business must operate in either the technology or business services sector;

 Fulfil the criteria of operating in a small or medium enterprise;

 Have an ongoing involvement in the business.

Attention will now turn to the selection of the entrepreneurs to participate in the research.