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THE WOMAN ENTREPRENEUR: MANAGEMENT SKILLS AND BUSINESS PROBLEMS by Robert D. Hi

THE WOMAN ENTREPRENEUR: MANAGEMENT SKILLS AND BUSINESS PROBLEMS by Robert D. Hisrich and Candida Brush ABSTRACT: LA FEMME D'AFFAIRES: SES HABILETES EN FAIT DE GESTION ET SES PROBLEMES DANS LE DOMAINE DES AFFAIRES Jusqu'd main tenant, bien que le chiffre des entreprises dont Ies propridtaires sont du sexe iAin soit en hausse, peu de recherches ont 6t^ faites sur Ies habilet^s des femmes d'affaires en fait de gestion et sur Ies difficult^s auxquelles elles sont appel^s k faire face pr^isement k cause de leur sexe.- En effet, Ies recherches d6j& faites en cette mati^re ont port^ notamment sur Ies diff^rents types de femme d'affaires, leur motivation, leurs caract^ristiques ddmographiques et Ies genres d'entreprise auxquelles elles se sont assocides. Or, pour rem^er k cefte lacune nous avons fait l'ex- pertise, k une fehelle nationale, de 468 femmes d'affaires. Plus pr&is6ment, nous nous sommes renseignds sur leurs milieux et leurs entrainements, ainsi que sur leurs entreprises dans le monde des affaires, leurs habilitds en fait de gestion, et, en dernier Ueii, Ies prbbl^mes auxquelles elles sont exposdes par le fait qu'elles sont du sexe fdminin. De cette expertise nous avons pu tirer certaines conclusions pratiques, dont nous ferons part & nos lecteurs dans l'article qui suit. Starting and operating a business en- tails considerable risk and effort, especially for the entrepreneur, who creates and builds a business from scratch, thereby assuming all the re- sponsibilities for development and man- agement as well as the corresponding risks and gains. The risk is perhaps even greater for a woman entrepreneur, who has all the usual business problems as well as the problems associated with being a woman in a male-dominated arena. In spite of this, increasing num- bers of women have entered the labor Dr. Hisrich is associate professor of management and di- rector of the Small Business Institute at Boston College. He is also a director of H&P Associates, a marketing/management consulting firm. His publications include numerous articles and four books: Marketing a New Pmduct: Its Plaiimiif;. Deuehiinwnt. ami Conlml; The MBA Career. Marketing: A Practical Managerial Apprxmch: and Prmiuct Planning atui Development. Candida Brush is a director with H&P Associates, a marketing and management consulting firm in Boston. She re. ceived an MBA degree from Boston College, and has taught marketing and business courses at several universities. force, some of whom have elected to start and operate their own businesses. A Bureau of Census report based on 1972 data indicates that female owned- businesses accounted for only 4.6 percent of all firms in the United States, with the receipts from female-owned businesses accounting for only 0.03 percent of all business receipts. The Small Business Administration reports that the number of self-employed women increased from 1.7 million in 1977 to 2.3 million in 1982—a 35 percent increase. During the same period the number of self-employed men rose by only 12 percent. Women- owned businesses accounted for over forty billion dollars in revenues.' BACKGROUND Most of what is known about entre- preneurs—their backgrounds, their mo- Wall Street Journal. 17 May 1983, p. 1. 30 Journal of Small Business Management tives for starting their own companies, and their business problems—is based on studies of male entrepreneurs.^ This is not surprising, since men make up the majority of people who start and run their own businesses. Interest in women entrepreneurs as research subjects has developed more recently. Studies of female entrepreneui-s have addressed basically the same questions as those of male entrepreneurs. One study of twenty female entrepreneurs found that their major motivations for starting a business were: the need to achieve, the desire to be independent, the need for job satisfaction, and economic necessity. These female entre- preneurs tended to have an autocratic style of management, and their major problem during startup was credit dis- crimination. Underestimating operating and/or marketing costs was a subse- quent problem.3 Another study of 122 black, white, Hispanic, and American Indian women entrepreneurs found that the responses of both minority and non-minority women entrepreneurs differed signifi- cantly from those of women in the gen- eral population on tests measuring achievement, autonomy, aggression, con- formity," independence, benevolence, and leadership. Differences were also found between minority and non-minority women entrepreneurs, with minority en- trepreneurs reporting that they started 'See, for example: Neil Cohen. "The Five Ages of Ihe En- trepreneur." Vpitture (July 1980), pp. 40-43; Orvis Collins and David G. Moore, 'I'he Enterprising Man, Michigan State Uni- versity, East Lansing, Michigan (1964); Eugene Gomolka, "Characteristics of Minority International and Small Business Enterprises," American Journal of Small Business (July 1977), pp, 12-21; John A, Hornady and John Abond,"Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs," Personnel Psychology (1971), pp. 50-60; Edward B. Roberts, "Entrepreneurship and Tech- nology; A Basic Study of Innovators—How to Keep and Capi- talize on Their Talents," Research Management (July 1968), pp, 249-266; and Harry Schrage, "The R&D Entrepreneur; Profile of Success," Hariianl Business Heiiiew (November 1966), pp. 55-69; Herbert A. Wainer and Ir»-in M. Robin, "Motivation of Research and Development Entrepreneurs," Journal of AiJlilinI Psyrliology (Fall 1969), pp. 178-184. 'Kleanor B. Schwartz, "Entrepreneurship; A New Female Frontier," ,/()iirfi(i/(»/• (V>n/<'/;)/«>rar\' Business (Winter 1979), pp. 47-76. their businesses at a later age than the non-minority women. Non-minority fe- male entrepreneurs scored higher on ratings of need for achievement and in- dependence; minority women appeared to place greater value on conformity and benevolence.'' Twenty-one women who participated in a study of the demographic character- istics, motivations, and business prob- lems of female entrepreneurs indicated that they had particular problems with collateral, obtaining credit, and over- coming society's belief that women are not as serious as men about business.^ A final study focused on how the char- acteristics of women entrepreneurs varied according to the type of business. The results indicated that women entre- preneurs exhibited some distinctive char- acteristics. They were older and more educated than either the general populace or the respondents in previous studies. They also had very supportive parents and husbands. Female entrepreneurs in nontraditional business areas (finance, in- surance, manufacturing, and construc- tion) also differed from their counterparts in more traditionally "female" business areas (retail and wholesale trade). The lat- ter group had particular difficulty in gaining access to external financial sources.^ The studies reported above dealt with restricted samples. In order to answer questions about female entrepreneurs in general throughout the United States, a survey was developed, the construction and results of which are described below. 'James DeCarlo and Paul R. Lyons, "A Comparison of Selected Personal Characteristics of Minority and Non- Minority Female Entrepreneurs," Journal of Small Business Management (December 1979), pp, 22-29. 'Robert D. Hisricb and Marie O'Brien, "The Woman En- trepreneur from a Business and Sociological Perspective, "in Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research. 1981 (Proceedings of the 1981 Conference on Entrepreneurship, Babson College, June 1981), pp. 21-39. 'Robert D. Hisrich and Marie O'Brien, "The Woman En- trepreneur as a Reflection of the Type of Business," in Fran- tiers of Entrepreneurship Research. 1982 (Proceedings of the 1982 Conference on Entrepreneurship, Babson College, June 1982), pp. 54-67. January 1984 31 RESEARCH DESIGN A questionnaire was developed which included a mixture of scaled, dichoto- mous, multiple choice, open-ended, and rank-order items designed to assess the following: motivation for starting a busi- ness, general entrepreneurial characteris- tics, management skills, social and psy- chological factors, educational and occu- pational influences, demographic infor- mation, and business data. Mailing lists of women entrepreneurs were obtained from trade associations and state offices. The questionnaire was then mailed to 1,151 women entrepre- neurs in 18 states. The survey included women from all areas of the country. Four hundred and sixty-eight usable questionnaires (fully completed and con- taining all of the relevant information) were returned, a 41 percent response rate. FINDINGS The findings are divided into four areas: the demographic composition and background of the women entrepreneurs, the nature of their business ventures, the skills of the entrepreneurs, and the prob- lems they confronted. Demographics The majority of the 468 women entre- preneurs in the sample were between the ages of 35 and 45; 55 percent were mar- ried and had children. Fifty-one percent of the women were the first-born in their families, and 68 percent had attended col- lege or graduate school. Nearly 70 per- cent of the women entrepreneurs had liberal arts degrees in one of several ma- jors, with business administration being the most frequently mentioned. Fewer than 9 percent reported majors in engi- neering and science—an obvious barrier to entering such traditionally male- dominated business areas as construction and manufacturing. The specific field of graduate study most frequently men- tioned was law, with the vast majority of women entrepreneurs who had graduate degrees reporting that their degrees were in one area or another of liberal arts. Education played an important role in the backgrounds of the women entrepre- neurs. Not only were their parents—par- ticularly their fathers—more highly edu- cated than the general populace, but the women entrepreneurs also tended to marry more highly educated men. The importance of education is reflected in the following uploads/Industriel/ women-enterpreneurs-management-skills-and-business-problems.pdf