Title: The social cluster of gender, agency and entrepreneurship

Authors: Gloria Haddad; Mark Esposito; Terence Tse

Addresses: Grenoble Ecole de Management, 12, Rue Semard, 38000, Grenoble, France ' Division of Continuing Education, Harvard University, 51 Brattle Street Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA; Grenoble Ecole de Management, 12 rue Semard, 38000 Grenoble, France ' ESCP Europe Business School, 527 Finchley Road, London NW3 7BG, UK

Abstract: Scholars have been concerned with studying gender variations and their implications on various measures of entrepreneurial performance (Gupta et al., 2009). As gender effects cannot always provide substantial meaning of a particular phenomenon (Ahl, 2006) this paper studies entrepreneurship from a social cognitive perspective and inductively explores differences and commonalities across gender. Entrepreneurship is a driver of economic growth however scarce are the articles tackling the Middle East region (Naguib and Jamali, 2015). In-depth interviews are conducted with 30 Lebanese entrepreneurs to understand the social factors which influence entrepreneurial aspirations in this particular context. Results reveal that entrepreneurship is bound to self-efficacy beliefs, which are the produce of stereotyping effects and social expectations of men and women, of educational practices, of occupational systems and socialisation experiences. The authors propose learning models, which advance knowledge and bring practical contributions to education and training fields to create more conducive environments for entrepreneurship.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; gender; human agency; self-efficacy; social cognitive; social learning; women entrepreneurs; entrepreneurship education; training; learning models; female entrepreneurs; social clusters; Lebanon; stereotyping effects; social expectations; educational practices; occupational systems; socialisation experiences; Middle East.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2016.077572

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2016 Vol.28 No.4, pp.431 - 450

Received: 19 Aug 2015
Accepted: 20 Aug 2015
Published online: 06 Jul 2016 *

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