Failure or voluntary exit? Reassessing the female underperformance hypothesis

By Rachida Justo, Dawn R. DeTienne, Philipp Sieger. 2015

191 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We reevaluate the female underperformance hypothesis by challenging the assumption that female-owned ventures are more likely to fail. Instead of equating exit with failure, we draw on exit literature and feminist theories to argue that female entrepreneurs are actually more likely than males to exit voluntarily. We argue for further gender differences by using an even more fine-grained conceptualization of entrepreneurial exit (failure, exit for personal reasons, and exit for other professional/financial opportunities). Post-hoc analyses also point to within-gender heterogeneity depending on family status. A sample probe of 219 Spanish entrepreneurs who had exited their business supports our overall reasoning.

Subfields: Accounting, Management of Technology and Innovation, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/474cba803c604606fe8e079bce243d87d2f54312

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In Accounting

In Management of Technology and Innovation

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Citations in the corpus

Entrepreneurial intentions and start-ups: Are women or men more likely to enact their intentions? (2018, background): “Additionally, women may face more business–family conflict (Hsu et al., 2016; Justo et al., 2015) and, thus, perceive the environment as challenging and unsuitable for entrepreneurial activity (Zhao et al., 2005) with insurmountable barriers.”
Entrepreneurs’ human capital and growth aspirations: the moderating role of regional entrepreneurial culture (2019, background): “Another relevant control variable, particularly in the Spanish context, is necessity entrepreneurship, which takes value 1 if the business was created by necessity or 0 if it was because of opportunity motivation (Bolívar-Cruz et al. 2014; Justo et al. 2015).”
Why Family Matters: The Impact of Family Resources on Immigrant Entrepreneurs’ Exit from Entrepreneurship (2016, unknown): “Gender could also indicate how much support someone needs to receive: women tend to rely more heavily on family resources in realizing economic opportunities (Justo et al., 2015).”