Abstract
We explore the gendered impact of risk aversion and country-level culture on nascent student entrepreneurs’ progress in the venturing process. Combining country-level cultural normative variables from the 2004 Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) survey with data from the 2013/2014 Global University Entrepreneurial Student Spirit Study (GUESSS), our sample consists of 1552 nascent student entrepreneurs from 11 countries. We start with the assumption that perceptions of risk-taking behaviors are not gendered. We then split our sample, finding that, for women, perceptions of risk-taking behaviors are associated with less progress in the venturing process; however, starting a new venture in a socially supportive culture moderates that relationship. For men, neither risk-taking behavior nor country cultural variables are related to their progress in the venturing process. Our study highlights both the importance of country-level contextual variables in entrepreneurship and the need to employ a gendered perspective when studying nascent entrepreneurship.
Highlights
Is the relationship among risk aversion, national culture, and entrepreneurs’ progress in the venturing process different for young women nascent entrepreneurs than for young men nascent entrepreneurs? This question, which grounds our study, is motivated by three independent observations
Research from economics tells us that risk is a function of entrepreneurship (Cantillion 1755) and risk aversion can often inform the decision to engage in entrepreneurial activities (Nabi and Liñán 2013)
Numerous empirical studies have explored the relationship between risk and entrepreneurial choice (Puri and Robinson 2007: Segal et al 2005), and many studies have used a gendered lens to study women and risk (Brindley 2005; Humbert and Brindley 2015) but less work has explored the relationship between risk aversion and country-level culture using a gendered lens
Summary
Is the relationship among risk aversion, national culture, and entrepreneurs’ progress in the venturing process different for young women nascent entrepreneurs than for young men nascent entrepreneurs? This question, which grounds our study, is motivated by three independent observations. Much of the recent literature on women’s entrepreneurship focuses broadly on the impact of social forces (Hechavarria et al 2017; Shahriar 2018), team diversity (Dai et al 2019), and stereotypes (Alsos and Ljunggren 2017; Balachandra et al 2019; Hmieleski and Sheppard 2019; Malmström et al 2017; Strohmeyer et al 2017; Yang et al 2019), finding gendered differences across a broad spectrum of contexts (García and Welter 2013) Taken together, these observations suggest that countrylevel culture may differentially influence the relationship between risk aversion and progress in the venturing process and that these differences may have a gendered dimension.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
