How do women entrepreneurs strategize growth? An investigation using the social feminist theory lens

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the strategic success factors of fast-growth women entrepreneurs, explicating how their gendered strategies influence their growth paths. Drawing on social feminist theory, our qualitative study posits that a conscious choice of female perspective can be the central principle behind women’s entrepreneurial behavior and positively associated with growth. Our findings provide a more nuanced understanding of how women entrepreneurs weave together (economic) growth with personal and social outcomes, while shaping their key strategic success factors – client relationship and branding, organizational values and culture, networking behavior, and leadership and management – with female attributes and values attained through socialization.

KEYWORDS:

• Entrepreneurship
• growth
• women

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the seed grant received from School of Management toward this project. We would like to thank the editor and our three reviewers for their insightful comments. We are also grateful to Prof. Pia Arenius for her review of the earlier draft of the paper. All three authors contributed equally to this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the RMIT School of Management Seed Grant [N/A].