Title: A gender perspective of Slovenian high-growth firm's profitability

Authors: Karin Širec; Dijana Močnik

Addresses: Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Maribor, Razlagova 14, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia ' Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor, Smetanova 17, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia

Abstract: This paper empirically tests whether firm profitability is dependent on a firm owner's gender and explains the relationship between a firm's profitability and firm size, leverage ratio, and labour costs. We used a sample of 607 male and 132 female-owned Slovenian high-growth firms. The results demonstrated that firm's profitability and leverage ratio is negatively related for both male- and female-owned firms whereas labour costs are positively related to it for male-owned firms only. The impact of firm size proved to be a significant determinant of profitability for male-owned firms only. The negative coefficient for the leverage ratio indicates that the higher the extent to which debts was used as the source of financing, the lower the profits. The positive association between labour costs and profitability in male-owned firms implies that the higher the labour cost, the higher the profitability of maleowned high-growth firms.

Keywords: gender perspective; high growth firms; gazelles; dynamic entrepreneurship; firm performance; leverage ratio; labour costs; firm size; multiple least squares dummy variable regression; Slovenia; firm profitability; business ownership.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2016.073986

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2016 Vol.27 No.2/3, pp.247 - 261

Received: 30 Mar 2015
Accepted: 10 May 2015
Published online: 31 Dec 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article