This book examines social entrepreneurship through a gender lens by portraying German female social entrepreneurs and their political, social, and economic contexts. It features analysis of different dimensions of the social entrepreneurship system and twenty-five in-depth interviews with social entrepreneurs and experts.
Businesses are looking for methods to incorporate social entrepreneurship in order to generate a positive return to society. Social enterprises have the ability to improve societies through altruistic work to create sustainable work environments for future entrepreneurs and their communities. Social Entrepreneurship: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a useful scholarly resource that examines the broad topic of social entrepreneurship by looking at relevant theoretical frameworks and fundamental terms. It also addresses the challenges and solutions social entrepreneurs face as they address their corporate social responsibility in an effort to redefine the goals of today’s enterprises and enhance the potential for growth and change in every community. Highlighting a range of topics such as the social economy, corporate social responsibility, and competitive advantage, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for business professionals, entrepreneurs, start-up companies, academics, and graduate-level students in the fields of economics, business administration, sociology, education, politics, and international relations.
Over the past century, an extensive literature has developed, exploring the impact of entrepreneurship on economic performance. The active participation of entrepreneurs in virtually all aspects of business and economic activity has obliged policy makers within the global economy to consider entrepreneurship as a determining variable in any political force, not only for bodies and groups created specifically to this end, but also for any decision-making body. To this end, specific actions promoting entrepreneurship have already been established around the world. However, the particular dynamics of entrepreneurship by women present unique opportunities and challenges. The women’s perspective has often been overlooked in research, practice, and policymaking, and yet yields rich insights and implications. This volume features research from an international array of authors, global data, and in-depth analysis of women’s entrepreneurial activity in Europe, Latin America, the United States, and Canada, to shed light on the positive impact of women’s entrepreneurship on economic growth and development. The first part covers a broad range of concepts relating to the history and context of the female economic perspective. The second part focuses on performance and success factors, with respect to such issues as innovation, social needs, and entrepreneurial orientation. The third part addresses issues of financing, including discussion of access to capital, microcredit, and entrepreneurial behavior. The fourth part considers additional topics, such as work-family balance and access to education. Together, the chapters offer new perspectives on the unique characteristics of women entrepreneurs and their contributions to economic development in theory, practice, and policymaking.
Are you ready to turn your ideas into reality and build a wildly successful business? There has never been a better time to say yes! With a computer and an Internet connection you can get your ideas, messages, and business out there like never before and create so much success. In this book, Carrie Green shows you how. Carrie started her first online business at the age of 20—she knows what it’s like to be an ambitious and creative woman with big dreams and huge determination . . . but she also knows the challenges of starting and running a business, including the fears, overwhelm, confusion, and blocks that entrepreneurs face. Based on her personal, tried-and-tested experience, she offers valuable guidance and powerful exercises to help you: • Get clear on your business vision • Move past the fears and doubts that can get in the way • Understand your audience, so you can truly connect with them • Create your brand and build a tribe of raving fans, subscribers, and customers • Manage your time, maintain focus, and keep going in the right direction • Condition yourself for success . . . and so much more! If you’re a creative and ambitious female entrepreneur, or are contemplating the entrepreneurial path, this book will provide the honest, realistic, and practical tools you need to follow your heart and bring your vision to life.
The Emerald Handbook of Women and Entrepreneurship in Developing Economies examines women's role in entrepreneurial practices in a range of developing countries and applies unique strategic contextual frameworks to analyse, interpret and understand individual processes, themes and issues.
Why do women start their own businesses? Is it solely because they are searching for financial success, or for other reasons? On the basis of detailed interviews with a number of women who have started their own businesses, this book, first published in 1985, reveals the significance of factors that are directly related to women’s experiences at home, at work, and in the wider society. The author’s analysis shows how business start-up enables many women, but not all, to achieve forms of economic and social independence that they would not otherwise enjoy. Further, they illustrate ways in which business proprietorship has a wide variety of effects upon individuals, and upon their personal relationships and life styles. They refute the notion of a single entrepreneurial experience and argue that the causes and consequences of business start-up are highly conditioned by the extent to which women are committed to traditionally prescribed roles and to profitability. The findings of this book will have important implications for the formulation of small business policies. It will also be of particular value to those interested in women’s studies and small business management.
A third of the world's entrepreneurial activity is driven by women. With the mass movement of people now commonplace, the role of female entrepreneurs in immigrant communities has become an increasingly important component of the world economy, its productivity, and the struggle against poverty. Throwing light on the dynamics of entrepreneurship generally, and on immigrant and female entrepreneurship in particular, the global Female Immigrant Entrepreneurship (FIE) project is a huge and exciting research undertaking. Written by the project's team of researchers based in prestigious business schools and universities on almost every continent, this important book begins the process of discovering why and how female driven business start-ups often seem to spontaneously emerge in adverse environments. Is it randomness, luck, or chance that determine success or failure, or vital critical forces and the inherent qualities of the women involved? The research emerging from the FIE project points to answers to questions about the integration of immigrant communities, their interaction with host economic and business environments, and the role of women in that interaction. With findings from more than fifteen countries, from the USA with some of the world's oldest and largest immigrant communities, to African countries that are the newest destination for Asian migrants, this book will help inform social and economic policy in communities and countries searching for prosperity. More than that, the book offers policy makers, business leaders, and those concerned with business development the chance to uncover some of the mystery around the complex phenomenon of entrepreneurship itself.
With the rise of information and communication technologies in today’s world, many regions have begun to adapt into more resource-efficient communities. Integrating technology into a region’s use of resources, also known as smart territories, is becoming a trending topic of research. Understanding the relationship between these innovative techniques and how they impact social innovation is vital when analyzing the sustainable growth of highly populated regions. The Handbook of Research on Smart Territories and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems for Social Innovation and Sustainable Growth is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the global practices and initiatives of smart territories as well as their impact on sustainable development in different communities. While highlighting topics such as waste management, social innovation, and digital optimization, this publication is ideally designed for civil engineers, urban planners, policymakers, economists, administrators, social scientists, business executives, researchers, educators, and students seeking current research on the development of smart territories and entrepreneurship in various environments.
Entrepreneurship in context has been described as the third wave in entrepreneurship research. Accordingly, specific socio-economic, political, market, and institutional contexts are key to fostering, enabling, and enacting entrepreneurial activity and behaviours. These contexts shape everyday entrepreneurship experiences. This book is based on the premise that how gender is articulated within the entrepreneurial debate has to acknowledge context. However, context is not a construct that only applies to those economies and situations that differ from the presumed norm of Western developed nations. Adopting a more critical appraisal of how context is positioned within current theorizing around gender and entrepreneurial behaviours offers potential to progress debate whilst acknowledging that competing and contrasting contextual influences require clearer recognition. This book, therefore, has the potential to unearth credible and robust approaches to further examining contextualisation and women entrepreneurship that advances new insights. By exploring and examining how contextual influences shape women’s entrepreneurship, this book challenges the assumption that women entrepreneurship is the same throughout the world. It will be of value to researchers, academics, and students with an interest in entrepreneurship, political economy, economics, and public policy.
"This volume challenges those who see gender inequalities invariably defining and constraining the lives of women. But it also broadens the conversation about the degree to which business is a gender-blind institution, owned and managed by entrepreneurs whose gender identities shape and reflect economic and cultural change." – Mary A. Yeager, Professor Emerita, University of California, Los Angeles This is the first book to consider nineteenth-century businesswomen from a global perspective, moving beyond European and trans-Atlantic frameworks to include many other corners of the world. The women in these pages, who made money and business decisions for themselves rather than as employees, ran a wide variety of enterprises, from micro-businesses in the ‘grey market’ to large factories with international reach. They included publicans and farmers, midwives and property developers, milliners and plumbers, pirates and shopkeepers. Female Entrepreneurs in the Long Nineteenth Century: A Global Perspective rejects the notion that nineteenth-century women were restricted to the home. Despite a variety of legal and structural restrictions, they found ways to make important but largely unrecognised contributions to economies around the world - many in business. Their impact on the economy and the economy’s impact on them challenge gender historians to think more about business and business historians to think more about gender and create a global history that is inclusive of multiple perspectives. Chapter one of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.
