A Gender‐Aware Study of Self‐Leadership Strategies among High‐Growth Entrepreneurs

Abstract

We apply a gender‐aware framework to examine the self‐leadership strategies men and women early stage high‐growth entrepreneurs employ as they develop innovations. Utilizing a matched‐pair sample of early stage entrepreneurs operating firms in high‐technology business incubators, our results suggest that female and male entrepreneurs have significantly different self‐goal‐setting and self‐cueing behaviors. Results also suggest male entrepreneurs who use stronger goal‐setting behaviors increase their intellectual property development to a greater extent than female founders. Further, for female entrepreneurs who use greater self‐cueing, the negative relationship realized with intellectual property development is lower than for male entrepreneurs.

Notes

10. Due to space limitations, the full set of results from the robustness analyses are not reported as they yield very similar outcomes to those documented in Table 2 and are available from the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bari L. Bendell

Bari L. Bendell is assistant professor in the Management and Entrepreneurship Department at Suffolk University.

Diane M. Sullivan

Diane M. Sullivan is associate professor in the Management and Marketing Department at the University of Dayton.

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The authors contributed equally to the development of this work.

Matthew R. Marvel

Matthew R. Marvel is the George A. Ball Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship in the Department of Management at Ball State University.

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The authors contributed equally to the development of this work.