Rebel or Relent: Matching Female Entrepreneurs’ Self-Presentation to Recipients’ Perceptions

Abstract

Entrepreneurs have the ability to actively manage stakeholders’ perceptions of them, influencing whether they are seen as successful or not (Nagy, Pollack, Rutherford, & Lohrke, 2012; Davis, Hmieleski, Webb, & Coombs, 2017). For female entrepreneurs this is a crucial aspect in building their businesses, as they need to more strongly communicate their legitimacy to overcome inherent gender biases especially on social media that can negatively influence their businesses (Alsos & Ljunggren, 2017). Thus, it is vital to better understand how female entrepreneurs develop successful communication strategies and how these (mis-)match with the perceptions of key stakeholders, furthering our understanding of successful female-owned businesses. Drawing on role congruity theory and choosing a theory-building approach to data analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), we conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with female entrepreneurs as well as their key stakeholders (data collection ongoing). Results show two main strategies that female entrepreneurs choose for their social media self-presentation: to rebel or to relent. A comparison of sender intentions and receiver perceptions revealed strong (mis-)matches. We expand role congruity theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002) by developing a holistic model of female entrepreneurs’ communication strategies on social media to cope with perceived incongruity.