Taking care of business: the impact of culture and gender on entrepreneurs’ blended value creation goals

Abstract

We examine entrepreneurs’ economic, social, and environmental goals for value creation for their new ventures. Drawing on ethics of care and theories of societal post-materialism, we develop a set of hypotheses predicting patterns of value creation across gender and countries. Using a sample of 15,141 entrepreneurs in 48 countries from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, we find that gender and cultural values of post-materialism significantly impact the kinds of value creation emphasized by entrepreneurs. Specifically, women entrepreneurs are more likely than men to emphasize social value goals over economic value creation goals. Individuals who start ventures in strong post-materialist societies are more likely to have social and environmental value creation goals and less likely to have economic value creation goals. Furthermore, as levels of post-materialism rise among societies, the relationship between value creation goals and gender changes, intensifying both the negative effect of being female on economic value goals and the positive effect on social value goals. In other words, post-materialism further widens the gender gap in value creation goals.