Abstract
Environmental entrepreneurship bears great potential to promote sustainable development. Several influencing factors on the level of environmental orientation have been identified by past literature. In this respect, mixed results occur with regard to the influence of gender on environmental entrepreneurship. However, these studies simply investigated the level of a single entrepreneur by distinguishing between male and female individuals, although ventures are increasingly founded by entrepreneurial teams. Consequently, this study quantitatively addresses the research question how the gender of founding teams influences the environmental orientation of entrepreneurial ventures. Based on a dataset of entrepreneurial ventures from the US and Germany, our results indicate that the level of environmental orientation is not dependent on the share of female members, but rather on the gender diversity of the founding team. We conclude that gender diversity within the entrepreneurial team is necessary to address both ecological and economic goals of environmental entrepreneurship. Based on this finding, theoretical and practical implications are drawn, in particular for policy, entrepreneurial teams and entrepreneurship training.
Highlights
Environmental entrepreneurship has received much attention in recent years due to its potentials for stimulating sustainable development (Dean and McMullen 2007; Lenox and York 2011; Fellnhofer et al 2014; Gast et al 2017)
In order to approach the above-mentioned research gaps, this study addresses the research question how the gender of founding teams influences the environmental orientation of entrepreneurial ventures
No support can be found for the first hypothesis, as there is no significant effect of the share of female founders on the environmental orientation of an entrepreneurial venture
Summary
Environmental entrepreneurship has received much attention in recent years due to its potentials for stimulating sustainable development (Dean and McMullen 2007; Lenox and York 2011; Fellnhofer et al 2014; Gast et al 2017). Former studies partly depicted women as having an influence on the level of environmental orientation of a venture These studies focussed either on the director board of corporate ventures (Kassinis et al 2016; Ben-Amar et al 2017) or on single entrepreneurs of small businesses (Braun 2010; Hechavarría et al 2012, 2017; Hechavarría 2016; Hörisch et al 2017). Large organisations differ in establishing their environmental orientation compared to smaller entrepreneurial ventures (Hockerts and Wüstenhagen 2010): while environmental entrepreneurs often integrate idealistic ideas right from the launch of a venture, large organisations frequently face the challenge to implement such ideas retrospectively into existing business routines. These different approaches call for analysing the effect of gender diversity on the environmental orientation for entrepreneurial ventures separately
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