Female business activity is confined in the main to what are viewed as “feminised occupational industry sectors” (Carter & Bennett, 2006; Henry & Johnston, 2003; Marlow, Carter & Shaw, 2008; Small Business Service, 2003). These include businesses in the catering, personal and business services, training and development and recruit­ment. According to the Gender Equality Unit […]

It is a widely held claim that women start a busi­ness to have more flexibility and freedom to juggle work, leisure and family commitments. Business growth is not an explicit objective as it would conflict with their purpose of choosing self employment (Arenius & Kovalainen, 2006; Brush, Carter, Gatewood, Greene, & Hart, 2004; Chell & […]

Female entrepreneurs are a heterogeneous group where their individual motivations for entering self employment and for growing the business differ. Additionally, the type of business and industry sector they establish their business in tends to vary from the male counterparts. In general research would suggest that the motivation for starting a new business, the nature […]

In spite of their growing numbers, women-owned businesses continue to lag behind male owned firms in Ireland both for recently started businesses and for established businesses (Forfas, 2007). In 2006 there were 60,000 male new firm entrepre­neurs and 21,000 female new firm entrepreneurs in Ireland where men were 2.9 times more likely than women to […]

A Strategy for Growth?1 Yvonne Costin University of Limerick, Ireland ABSTRACT The advancing pace of women S entrepreneurial activity across the globe represents a promising trend to fuel economic development and socialprogress (Fitzsimons & O ’Gorman, 2005). Research has shown that women-led businesses have strong growth aspirations, are customer-oriented, value human capital and cultural aspects […]

This study is an attempt to contribute to extant research on gender, anonymity and virtual teams. Based on the multiple case study data, the paper has proposed relationships between gender, anonym­ity, group processes and outcomes throughout the lifespan of a virtual team. These provide specific evidence of the temporal influence of member characteristics and technology […]

During the interview, most members agreed that communication related to personal experience and feelings helped them to release the tension in the discussion and resulted in them being more satisfied with the learning process. Thus, socio­emotional discussion is positively related to the satisfaction with collaboration process (p10). In the interview, we also find that members […]

Socio-emotional acts such as personal feelings and thoughts led to greater member awareness. For instance, in Team A, Vernon’s sharing that he found “good stuff’ for the task and his assertion for the points, led the other group members to believe that he was enthusiastic about the task and potentially willing to take charge of […]

From our data, gender seems to influence the group process. Generally, females avoided direct conflict in communication as seen from Team C. When women perform a task, they try to foster cooperation and connection within the group. As a result, members of an all-female learning group tend to reserve their opinions and agree readily to […]

From the case analysis, the anonymous group (Team B) tended to be very polite, and not go into great lengths in discussion compared to the identified groups (Team A and C). Moreover, in Team B, although two members were frustrated with a member as revealed in the interviews, over CMC they did not express their […]