Small businesses continue steadily to grow in importance to the national economy. According to the Small Business Administration, America’s 22 million small businesses generate over fifty percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product and are the principal way to obtain new jobs. The National Foundation for Women Business Owners reported that between 1987 and 1994, the number of women-owned businesses grew by 78% and women-owned companies accounted for 36% of all firms.
Although the development in the amount of women-owned businesses is motivating, the size of such businesses remains small in conditions of both revenues and number of employees, especially compared to male-owned businesses. One explanation for this disparity is that female business ownership is concentrated mainly in the retail and service industries where businesses are relatively smaller in conditions of employment and revenue instead of high technology, construction, and manufacturing. One of the most fruitful streams of research in women’s occupational choice has been based on sociable learning theory.
Specifically, self-efficacy has been found to relate with both type and amount of occupations considered by college men and women, and with regard to traditional and non-traditional occupations. Entrepreneurship researchers have also used social learning theory to study entrepreneurial intentions. This study builds on that background of women’s career development and entrepreneurial intentions to examine differences between traditional and non-traditional women business owners.
We examine 170 women business owners in various traditional and non-traditional businesses in Utah and Illinois. Questionnaires were the principal method of collecting data, in addition to 11 in-depth interviews from an example of the study respondents. Using a careers perspective, predicated on interpersonal learning theory, we hypothesized that ladies in both of these different types of industries would differ on levels of self-efficacy toward entrepreneurship or business efficacy, their profession goals and their recognized social support. A second evaluation was also done that explored the partnership between the same independent variables and success or performance of the business.
The results offer support for by using this integrative model to comprehend differences between ladies in traditional and non-traditional industries. The first analysis uncovered that significant differences exist between the two organizations on several of the independent variables. Traditional business owners had higher business effectiveness for opportunity reputation, higher career expectations of life balance and security plus they reported that the financial support received from others was more important to them than those in non-traditional businesses.
On the other hand, the non-traditional owners experienced higher venture effectiveness for planning and higher career expectations for the money or prosperity than the traditional group. The next analysis explored whether success, as assessed by sales, was suffering from differences in business efficacies, career expectations, or recognized support received by women in traditional businesses as compared to those in non-traditional ones.
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This analysis exposed that traditional women business owners might have different factors that donate to their success than non-traditional owners. Specifically, for the original owners, business efficacies for opportunity reputation and economic management as well as the career expectation of autonomy and money (or wealth) were positively related to sales.
For the same group effectiveness toward planning and the necessity for security were negatively related to sales. For the non-traditional women, business efficacy toward planning and the profession expectation of autonomy were favorably related to sales as the expectation of money or prosperity was adversely related. For the same group Also, the perceived importance of the emotional and financial support was related to sales adversely. In the past, a lot of the entrepreneurial research has used male samples of business owners predominantly.