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International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship Gender and family business: new theoretical directions: Haya Al-Dajani Zografia Bika Lorna Collins Janine Swail Article information: To cite this document: Haya Al-Dajani Zografia Bika Lorna Collins Janine Swail , (2014),"Gender and family business: new theoretical directions", International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 6 Iss 3 pp. - Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJGE-11-2013-0069 Downloaded on: 26 September 2014, At: 01:41 (PT) References: this document contains references to 0 other documents. To copy this document: [email protected] The fulltext of this document has been downloaded 16 times since 2014* Users who downloaded this article also downloaded: Jane L Glover, Colette Henry, Haya Al-Dajani, (2014),"Gender, power, and succession in family farm business", International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 6 Iss 3 pp. - Lorna Collins, Nicholas O'Regan, (2011),"Editorial: The evolving field of family business", Journal of Family Business Management, Vol. 1 Iss 1 pp. 5-13 Ramona K. Zachary, (2011),"The importance of the family system in family business", Journal of Family Business Management, Vol. 1 Iss 1 pp. 26-36 Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by 108515 [] For Authors If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.com Emerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services. Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. *Related content and download information correct at time of download. Downloaded by University of East Anglia At 01:41 26 September 2014 (PT)
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Gender and Family Business: New Theoretical Directions

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Page 1: Gender and Family Business: New Theoretical Directions

International Journal of Gender and EntrepreneurshipGender and family business: new theoretical directions:Haya Al-Dajani Zografia Bika Lorna Collins Janine Swail

Article information:To cite this document:Haya Al-Dajani Zografia Bika Lorna Collins Janine Swail , (2014),"Gender and family business: new theoretical directions",International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 6 Iss 3 pp. -Permanent link to this document:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJGE-11-2013-0069

Downloaded on: 26 September 2014, At: 01:41 (PT)References: this document contains references to 0 other documents.To copy this document: [email protected] fulltext of this document has been downloaded 16 times since 2014*

Users who downloaded this article also downloaded:Jane L Glover, Colette Henry, Haya Al-Dajani, (2014),"Gender, power, and succession in family farm business", InternationalJournal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 6 Iss 3 pp. -Lorna Collins, Nicholas O'Regan, (2011),"Editorial: The evolving field of family business", Journal of Family BusinessManagement, Vol. 1 Iss 1 pp. 5-13Ramona K. Zachary, (2011),"The importance of the family system in family business", Journal of Family BusinessManagement, Vol. 1 Iss 1 pp. 26-36

Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by 108515 []

For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors serviceinformation about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Pleasevisit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information.

About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio ofmore than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of onlineproducts and additional customer resources and services.

Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on PublicationEthics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.

*Related content and download information correct at time of download.

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Guest Editorial

Gender and Family Business: New Theoretical Directions

Introduction

The contribution of family businesses accounts for a substantial proportion of the economy

(Cabrera-Suarez et al., 2001; Cromie & O’Sullivan, 1999; Davis & Harveston, 1998; Ibrahim

et al., 2001; Matthews et al., 1999; Shepherd & Zacharakis, 2000; Stavrou & Swiercz, 1998).

As entities owned, controlled and operated by different members of a family (Brockhaus,

2004; Cole, 1997; Cromie & O’Sullivan, 1999; Rowe & Hong, 2000), in the United States

and Latin America, family businesses constitute between 80-95% of all businesses, and in

Europe and Asia, at least 80% of firms are family owned and family controlled (Poza &

Daugherty, 2013). Overall, family businesses account for over 50% of the developed

economies’ GDP, and 50% of total employment (Shepherd & Zacharakis, 2000). In the UK

over 75% of all businesses are family-owned employing approximately 50% of the national

workforce (Harvey, 2004). Thus, the contribution of family-owned firms to the economy

cannot be ignored. Despite this dominance of family businesses, a lack of consensus on the

exact definition of family business persists and is an indicator of their nascent status (Litz,

1995; Miller et al., 2007). Research on performance of family businesses, succession

processes, knowledge management, strategic thinking, decision making processes (Collins et

al., 2010), family dynamics and operations (Carlsen & Getz, 2000) continue to dominate this

established discipline, especially as less than a quarter of family businesses survive to the

second generation, and only about a seventh survive to the third generation (Leach & Bogod,

1999). Indeed, the succession theme dominates the family business literature (Carlsen &

Getz, 2000; Chua et al., 2003; Bird et al., 2002), with the role of women and daughters in this

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succession, and more widely within the family business domain, gaining increasing

recognition that extends beyond a focus on their traditional gendered roles (Danes et al.,

2005; Sharma, 2004; Barrett & Moores, 2009; Jimenez, 2009; Wang, 2010; Bjursell &

Bäckvall, 2011; Heinonen & Stenholm, 2011).

Given the international evidence of the significant transformations in men’s and women’s

roles, positioning and leadership within family businesses (Baines & Wheelock, 2000;

Cappuyns, 2007; Danes et al., 2005), these evolving dynamics influence theoretical

developments as well as the practices of socio-cultural and economic structures and policy

initiatives. To this extent, a gender theory approach embracing family business research

contributes to a much-needed theoretical re-construction of family businesses in the 21st

century. However, gender and gender theory remain largely ignored in family business

research. Indeed, in charting the future of family business research, many including Litz,

Pearson and Litchfield (2012), disregard gender completely from their agendas. Thus, this

special issue confronts and addresses this gap in the extant literature. In doing so, we aim to

contribute to the widely articulated call for further research that will enhance our

understanding of the family business (Malinen, 2004; Mulholland, 2003; Wang, 2010;

Jimenez, 2009). In this new research context, gender emerges as a key consideration.

Gender - a theoretical approach to family business research

Under the spell of the agency and RBV theoretical bases, ‘family’ is mostly presented in the

existing family business literature as an undifferentiated concept, and as a result, it is rarely

understood as a negotiated phenomenon but rather “automatically attributed by virtue of

blood or marriage” (Karra, Tracey & Phillips, 2006: 862). More specifically, agency theory is

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a broad perspective that focuses on the economic costs that arise whenever ownership and

control (managers) are separated and its proponents view family firms as contexts in which

their alleged non-separation brings about considerable cost advantages (Schulze, Lubatkin &

Dino, 2003). Using the agency theory lens, “kinship thus tempers self-interest” and family-

based altruism “compels parents to be generous to their children” (Schulze, Lubatkin and

Dino, 2003:180), albeit without stressing its potentially exploitative nature, subordination of

women and role for the reproduction of capitalism (see, for example, the decades-old feminist

critique Gavron, 1966; Benston, 1972; Oakley, 1974). On the other hand, free-riding, shirking

or the consumption of perks by family members that often made their appearance in the

relevant literature as agency problems (Karra, Tracey & Phillips, 2006) are generally treated

as a common characteristic of intergenerational relationships rather than gendered processes

within family businesses. To this extent, the effect of gender on “the politics of value

determination that influences a family firm’s vision” and strategy (Chrisman, Chua &

Sharma, 2005: 569) is largely ignored.

Using a more specific theoretical angle, the construct of ‘familiness’ as a means of explaining

the distinctive bundle of business resources and capabilities related to systemic family

interaction has become the backbone of the influential resource-based framework for

assessing the strategic advantages of family firms (Habbershon & Williams, 1999). Their

members are even considered to “have a ‘family’ language that allows them to communicate

more efficiently” (Habbershon & Williams, 1999: 4). However, such a “definition of

familiness does not include a temporal dimension” (Pearson, Carr & Shaw, 2008: 951),

focuses on a firm’s internal idiosyncrasies, is habitually ethnocentric and therefore, leaves

unexplored the changing ‘legitimacy’ of family business relations over time and across space.

Furthermore, it does not challenge or extend existing knowledge about the gender/family

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business interface. Interestingly, variety in family structures has been seen by the RBV

scholars as closely connected to networking ability, rates of new business venturing,

difficulty in shedding resources and patient resource accumulation within the family business

(Chrisman, Chua & Sharma, 2005), albeit without paying enough attention to the

contingencies of disadvantaged membership. To this extent, a new understanding of family

business interactions informed by a gendered perspective is quintessential, while at the same

time a call for more research on addressing how the ‘other’ is constructed in family business

studies is timely.

Bradley (2007) argued that the spheres of production (the business) and re-production (the

family) are intimately connected and co-dependent, and thus (self-) employment and family

relationships are extremely important locations of the social ordering of gender. The majority

of firms are copreneurial or family ventures where the contribution of all household members

is essential for business survival and success (Steier & Greenwood, 2000; Aldrich & Cliff,

2003; Ruef et al., 2003; Brannon et al., 2013). In addition, as stated earlier, if one takes into

account the international evidence of the dramatic changes in men’s and women’s roles,

positioning and leadership within family businesses (Baines & Wheelock, 2000; Cappuyns,

2007; Danes et al., 2005; Jimenez, 2009), it is reasonable to infer that the theoretical and

policy implications of such changes must also be significant.

In recent years, the theoretical developments have been actively pursued in the

entrepreneurship domain with scholars introducing gendered analyses and critiques which

expose the theoretical constraints and limitations of much of the entrepreneurial research to

date (see the recent works of Ahl, 2004, 2006; Marlow & Ahl, 2012; Marlow & McAdam,

2013; Hamilton, 2013; Rouse et al., 2013). These critiques highlight the prevailing

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entrepreneurial discourse which is essentially masculine, and limits the possibilities of who

can claim to be an entrepreneur and what constitutes entrepreneurial behaviour (Ogbor, 2000;

Ahl, 2006). Although women’s enterprise is much “more than growing in size” as Rosa,

Carter and Hamilton (1996: 463) have exceptionally pointed out almost two decades ago, the

contemporary ideal type of entrepreneur is popularly represented as a white male in his prime

years [35 – 55] who establishes a venture with an economic imperative (Calás et al., 2009;

Redien Collet, 2009; Rindova et al., 2011). Consequently, women are portrayed as outsiders

or intruders to this field, and are detrimentally positioned in deficit (Taylor & Marlow, 2009),

which undermines the existing and potential contribution that women as both entrepreneurs

and family business actors make to economies and societies at large. Ultimately, the

performance of the women-owned business is perceived as under-par, condemned for being

smaller, risk-averse, lacking growth orientation and dismissed as illegitimate because they are

often home-based, part-time, or life-style (Brush, 1992). Indeed, as Marlow (2013: 95) aptly

surmises, ‘almost every detrimental business term possible has visited upon the hapless

female entrepreneur.’ This is further exacerbated by the assumption within the mainstream

research agenda that entrepreneurship is a neutral activity open and accessible to all with an

idea, ambition and energy. This discourse of agentic individualism naively overlooks the

social, cultural and institutional environments that influence the field (Ahl, 2006; Baughn,

Chua & Neupert, 2006).

One institutional environment which is explored in this special issue is that of the family,

arguably the single most important social institution founded in all societies. Traditional

functionalist approaches to the study of gender roles, such as that of Parsons and Bales (1956)

suggested that within the family in a capitalist society there was a need for role specialisation,

with men carrying out instrumental roles which involved functioning in the cut-throat world

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of business. In contrast, the family largely required women to carry out expressive roles of

caring and nurturing. The presumed mutual exclusivity of these roles provided justification

for the type of family that became dominant: the ‘traditional’ or breadwinner/housewife

family (Bradley, 2007). However, in recent decades there has been considerable change in

patterns of employment and related changes in patterns of family composition and family

demography explained by numerous factors. Interestingly, Aldrich and Cliff (2003) argue

that changes in the composition of families that have occurred over time are also altering the

opportunities and resources available for venturing.

Despite this, Arber and Ginn (1991) argued that work and family are still autonomous

spheres, with apparent advances in women's labour market position failing to translate into

commensurate advances in their relative position within the family. Indeed, Ahl (2004: 167)

when presenting her analyses of how entrepreneurship articles construct work and family

explained, “the existence of a line dividing a public sphere of work from a private sphere of

home, family and children is also taken for granted in the entrepreneurship literature”.

Interestingly, approaches that combine these two spheres are now present in the institutional

entrepreneurship literature (for example, see Bika, 2012), whilst an earlier social capital

perspective of the ‘familiness construct’ and its components (Pearson, Carr & Shaw, 2008)

made a good start in rectifying this deficiency, and thus saw the family and the business as

enmeshed with one another rather as distinct entities. Whilst this is promising for the field of

family business entrepreneurship, there is still a tendency for much of the existing literature

to conceptualize women in family business as marginalized through the forces of patriarchy

or paternalism (Hamilton, 2006).

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Thus, the purpose of this special issue is to investigate the interface between gendered

processes and family business which, whilst continuously evolving remains under researched

within the entrepreneurship domain (Sonfield & Lussier, 2009). In exploring the extent to

which gendered processes are reinforced or not in family business operations and dynamics,

we aim to shed light on how gendered processes contribute to our understanding of family

business. In doing so, our approach will complement the agency and Resource-Based View

(RBV) theoretical bases which continue to dominate family business research (Chrisman et

al., 2009; Litz et al., 2012), and further contribute to extending gender theories.

Special Issue Rationale

The theme for this special issue was inspired by the Women in Family Business event held at

the Norwich Business School (NBS) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in 2011. This

one-day conference, sponsored by the Norwich Business School at UEA and the Economic

and Social Research Council (RES-000-22-2378), was a collaboration between UEA’s

Women, Research and Enterprise Forum (WREF), the Gender and Enterprise Network

(GEN) - a special interest group of the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship

(ISBE) - and the Women in Family Business Network. A series of research-focused

presentations delivered by Professor Susan Marlow, Dr Zografia Bika, Dr Louise Humphries

and Dr Julia Rouse were complemented by a ‘women in family business’ panel facilitated by

Dr Haya Al-Dajani. The ‘big questions’ with panellists Michelle Jarrold, Managing Director

at Jarrold and Sons Ltd, Emily Norton of Norton Dairies, Patrizia Spada of Italian Delights

and Stephanie and Nolly Challis of AmeyCespa previously Donarbon Limited, focused on

the importance, uniqueness, recognition and contributions of female family members within

their family enterprises. Following the academic presentations and panel discussion, the

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arising dialogue from the forty five local, regional and national academics, policy makers and

practitioners attending the event repeatedly addressed the legitimacy, accountability, gender

inequality, and succession issues challenging family businesses as the involvement of female

members becomes more prevalent. This event led to the launch of this special issue.

We invited articles that analysed and interpreted gendered processes in family businesses

through i) gender theories, ii) agency theory, iii) RBV theory and iv) any other theoretical

lens that enhances our understanding of the interface between gendered processes and family

businesses. We expected articles to either challenge or extend existing knowledge and

theories about the gender/family business interface. Indeed, articles considering and

proposing definitions of family business informed by a gendered perspective, and how this is

shaped by the social, cultural and business environments, were greatly appreciated. The call

for papers attracted a total of eighteen articles. Given the high quality of the articles

submitted, the selection process was challenging. The rationale for the five selected articles

centred on a representation of the diversity in theoretical approaches and contexts in

researching gender and family business. For example, Mary Barrett’s article presents a

combination of family business and radical subjectivist economics to enhance theory on

women’s entrepreneurship. Robert Smith’s article discusses the theory of matriarchy in

entrepreneurship and family business, while Sylvia Chant’s article proposes a theory of the

‘feminization of responsibility and obligation’ that highlights the impact of gender on under-

capitalised firms in developing countries. The article by Jonathan Deacon, Jackie Harris and

Louise Worth focuses on copreneurship amongst married couples and discusses the gendered

tensions embedded in this form of family business. Finally, Jane Glover’s article centres on

the farm context and the gender and power dynamics at play in succession. Thus, the five

selected articles in this special issue make a unique contribution to the research agendas

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within the family business research as well as that within the gender and entrepreneurship

research.

Special Issue Contributions

As guest editors, we are pleased to present in this special issue five articles that enhance our

knowledge of the gendered processes in family business structures, operations, sustainability

and succession. Collectively, through empirical analyses and theoretical debates, our selected

articles challenge existing norms inherent in the field of family business and

entrepreneurship. It has been highlighted that these norms are inherently masculine whereby

'entrepreneurial theories are created by men, for men, and are applied to men' (Holmquist &

Sundin, 1988: 1). The heroic, normative figure of the entrepreneur is not only presented as a

man, but also the conceptual construction of the ‘family business’ places more emphasis on

the business than on the family; thus ignoring the cultural, historical and emotional dynamics

intertwined in business and family-life (Katila, 2002).

Responding to specific calls on the necessity of contextualizing entrepreneurship research

(Welter, 2011), and enhanced theory driven women’s entrepreneurship research (Rouse et al.,

2013), Mary Barrett’s article considers women’s entrepreneurship within the family business

context through a radical subjectivist view of economics. She focuses on the various

contextual factors around women’s entrepreneurship and takes a first step towards creating

the “gender-aware framework of entrepreneurship sought by Brush, de Bruin and Welter

(2009) and away from the limitations of a specific feminist ideology. In doing so, this article

presents a new theoretical direction for researching gender and family business. The findings

relating to the entrepreneurial imagination, empathy, modularity and self-organization

challenge the existing view on women’s entrepreneurship and illustrate how the family

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business context prepares rather than hinders women for leadership and entrepreneurship

within, and beyond this specific context. These results were obtained from data collected

through a case study approach with 16 women in leadership positions in family businesses in

the U.S., the Middle East, the U.K., Southeast Asia, Canada, and Australia. This article

presents a thorough agenda of future research recommendations addressing gender and the

family business.

Moving from a radical subjectivist approach, Robert Smith’s article on the theory of

matriarchy confronts the universality of traditional reflections of family businesses as

entrepreneurship stories, and challenges researchers to critically consider how we portray

women in family businesses, and how we narrate their stories. He considers patriarchy,

matriarchy and the entrepreneurial family, suggesting that family businesses can act as

matriarchies of “social and economic reciprocity” as well as “egalitarian societies of

consensus”. This reframing of family business in terms of the matriarchal role presents an

interesting departure from the traditional typography of family firms. In focusing on the role

of the matriarch in family business, Robert Smith discusses the roles and power positions that

women can attain within family businesses, and examines the contextual processes through

which these are either enabled or constrained. He argues that when the business is an

extension of the family, matriarchy presents an epitome platform from where women can

exert influence on the daily matters of the family business. In considering matriarchy as a

symbolic space, and recognizing that gender and entrepreneurship are ‘situated practices’

acted and performed within this space (Bruni et al., 2004), Robert Smith similarly to Mary

Barrett acknowledges the importance of context in entrepreneurship (Welter, 2011).

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In her article; ‘Gender, Power and Succession in Family Farm Business’, Jane Glover’s

discussions are very relevant to improving our understanding of how power operates within

the succession process in small firms, and in doing so, corresponds to Robert Smith’s theory

of matriarchy. Glover’s article takes an ethnographic approach to study a small family farm

in the Midlands of England (UK), and demonstrates how power struggles and gender issues

face one daughter as she becomes a partner and future successor in the family business.

Daughter succession is a particularly under-researched area, and so this case study provides

useful insights into what is an increasingly common scenario. To this extent, Glover’s article

turns the focus of scholarly enquiry away from the role of traditional farm wife and shows

how contemporary women enter the farm business through succession rather than marriage in

the twenty-first century. In this family business context, gender bias emerges as a determinant

of routine farm management but not of strategy.

In her article, Sylvia Chant presents a different thesis resulting from a context focusing on the

gender dimension of ‘undercapitalised’ family businesses in developing countries. Here,

Chant uses a revisionist concept of ‘the feminisation of poverty’ and proposes a thesis on the

‘feminisation of responsibility and obligation’. We learn that poor women are mostly ‘self-

employed’ and ‘home-based’ rather than ‘managers’ within formal family firms. Drawing

from the experience of the Global South (with a special emphasis on urban slums) and its

prevailing feminisation of anti-poverty initiatives (e.g. micro-finance, food hand-outs,

machinery, vocational or infrastructural support), Chant argues that the economic

empowerment of women and their engagement in remunerative activity is not a sufficient

solution to their gendered privations. In any case, the large number of female-headed

households does not represent a good indicator of disadvantage per se (as assumed by ‘the

feminisation of poverty’ perspective), but rather covers up the intricacies of poverty

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management at the grassroots. In developing countries, poor women are currently taking

greater economic, labour and time-consuming responsibilities for dealing with household

poverty (e.g. debt, care work and low-paid or informal employment), but are not

commensurately improving their negotiating capacity with spouses and other personal

rewards and rights such as business ownership, employer’s status, occupational prestige, asset

control or simply, leisure. To this extent, gender disadvantage in the Global South manifests

itself less in entrepreneurship (poor women’s own account business ventures) and more in

family business management issues.

Finally, set in South East Wales (UK), the article by Jonathan Deacon, Jackie Harris and

Louise Worth does not specifically explore ‘family business’ but acknowledges heterosexual

copreneurship within a sub group of the wider small business domain (Marshack, 2004).

Here, the authors highlight that not all husband and wife teams are copreneurial, and that

within copreneurial teams, not all members are entrepreneurial. Their exploratory study

challenges the perception of the gendered division of labour within the copreneurial

heterosexual business, and thus the assumption/stereotype of the male entrepreneur as the

lead. Their study seeks to discover granularity within the entrepreneurship domain -

especially the social construct, and thus the contextualised conceptualisation of small firms -

exploring the socialised detail of the descriptor of ‘copreneurship.’

Jonathan Deacon, Jackie Harris and Louise Worth suggest that copreneurship is a gendered

process and not a process of gender whereby the former suggests a fluidity of psychological

application and the latter a fixed physiological typology. Their argument supports the

established notion that as a socially constructed process, copreneurship can exist in any

structure, process or context where two or more people are gathered. The article questions

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whether or not gendered identities are ‘hybrid’, and as such, also questions the

appropriateness of ascribing the husband and wife (son/father, mother/daughter) labels, which

in themselves have gendered connotations and carry defined societal expectations of roles

(McAdam & Marlow, 2010).

Conclusion

This special issue contributes to addressing the gap between family business, gender and

entrepreneurship by presenting five articles that offer alternative theoretical approaches to

researching gender in family businesses. A common thread among our selected articles

supports the exploration of further gendered critique in two future research directions. First,

exploring how leadership is understood through a gender lens in family businesses. This can

be approached through a radical subjectivism perspective considering shared and individual

leadership in the context of business families’ propensity to innovate (Farrington, Venter &

Bischoff, 2012; Litz & Kleyson, 2001). Second, moving beyond conventional assumptions of

‘the family unit’ to include studies that recognise single parent families, same sex couples,

step families and extended families will provide much scope to employ gender as an

analytical tool to advance more robust theoretical debates. Both directions offer ample

research opportunities to explore gendered processes in the family business, which remain

imperative (Al-Dajani & Marlow, 2010), especially given the potential threats to women’s

roles within the family business.

Furthermore, in terms of future research in family business, applying radical subjectivism

with its individualistic leanings toward family business issues could complement efforts

towards developing research agendas into areas of family business strategy such as shared

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leadership in family firms, although we acknowledge the potential methodological challenges

of doing so. Future research may also explore further the effects of temporal dimensions on

gender and business management, including daily operations and strategic direction. This

would be a potentially useful and relevant theme for the wider family business research area.

We also encourage longitudinal research approaches as these allow for the exploration of

change in gender dynamics, gender stereotypes, business management and family and

business life-cycles. In addition, their outcomes will be useful in informing policy, practice

and family business consultancy whereby the implications and potential effects of gender on

the family and the family business can play a significant role in determining management,

succession, and other plans, strategies and decisions.

Finally, in drawing on the articles in this special issue, we concur that entrepreneurship

research, policy and practice should be released from the domination by the masculine ‘hero

narrative’ through a reconsideration of those images, narratives and discourses that we

ourselves have constructed to research, describe and define entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship

and entrepreneurial practices.

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Acknowledgments: We would like to acknowledge and express our sincere thanks to all the

contributors, reviewers, the IJGE editorial team, funding bodies (ESRC RES-000-22-2378)

and the networks that brought us together, the sponsors, speakers and participants of the

Women in Family Business event where this special issue was born, and the readers of this

special issue. In addition, we would also like to acknowledge all the submissions that we

were unable to include in this special issue. We hope that those articles have found suitable

journal outlets and we look forward to seeing them published in the near future.

About the Authors:

Dr Haya Al-Dajani: Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management, at the

Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia (UEA), UK. Her research focuses on

gender, entrepreneurship and empowerment. Her overall research aim is the understanding of

the intersectionality of these three dimensions, and their collective impact on economic and

social development. Her research has been published in journals including the ‘International

Small Business Journal’, ‘Gender, Work and Organization’ and the ‘International Journal of

Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research’. E-mail: [email protected]

Dr Zografia Bika: Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, at the Norwich Business School,

University of East Anglia (UEA), UK. Prior to this post, she held the prestigious George

David Research Fellowship in family business and social change at the University of

Edinburgh Business School. Her research interests focus on rural, family and institutional

entrepreneurship issues. She has published in various journals including ‘Entrepreneurship

and Regional Development’, ‘Environment and Planning A’, ‘The Sociological Review’ and

‘Sociologia Ruralis’. Her family business research has been supported by a UK Economic

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and Social Research Grant (RES-000-22-2378) in which she was the lead researcher. E-mail:

[email protected]

Dr Lorna Collins: Royal Agricultural College. Her research interests are family business

succession and social innovation. Lorna co-founded Knowing and Growing Ltd., a social

enterprise that seeks to improve the intellectual property knowledge within social enterprises,

in 2010 when she also co-founded the Institute for Conscious Business, whose purpose is to

promote awareness of positive actions and practices within business so that businesses can

benefit society as a whole. Lorna co-founded and is co-editor of the Journal of Family

Business Management, a fully refereed academic journal published by Emerald Ltd., first

published in April 2011, which is dedicated to advancing management research in family

business and aimed at practitioners, family business owners and academics. E-mail:

[email protected]

Dr Janine Swail: Lecturer in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Nottingham University

Business School within the University of Nottingham Institute for Enterprise and Innovation

(UNIEI). Janine’s research interests are in nascent entrepreneurship, and in particular how

women navigate the entrepreneurial process. She is also interested in the role of media and

culture in influencing entrepreneurial intentions, particularly among young people. She is

currently on the Board of Trustees for Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship

(ISBE) and is a former Associate Editor of the International Journal of Entrepreneurial

Behaviour and Research. E-mail: [email protected]

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