PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Why family businesses get more from women leaders

2024-01-19
(Press-News.org) Family businesses account for more than 70 percent of global GDP, and survey data shows that they are much friendlier to female leadership: up to 55 percent have at least one woman on their board and 70 percent are considering a woman for their next CEO. Experts have attributed this outlier gender parity to an emphasis on long-term strategies or family values. But a new study, published in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, suggests that women’s success as leaders in family businesses is deeply rooted in how employees interpret their leadership style.

“Family firms tend to focus on being inclusive and supportive of internal stakeholders, extending the sense of ‘family’ and community,” says Remedios Hernández-Linares of the Universidad de Extremadura in Spain and one of the study’s authors. “This culture creates a moderating effect for women leaders — their leadership is perceived as relationship-building and values dissemination.”

This leadership style aligns more closely with Western gender norms that characterize women as more empathetic and cooperative and men as more competitive and aggressive. The authors note, however, that women leaders at family businesses are not necessarily more impactful because they conform to gender norms. They thrive because their businesses’ strategies emphasize areas where women are traditionally seen as competent.

“CEOs influence employees’ behaviors via modeling, and leaders who are more credible and legitimate are more effective role models,” says María Concepcion Lopez-Fernández of Universidad de Cantabria in Spain, another of the study’s authors. “Perceived incongruity between female gender roles and leadership roles can lead to prejudice and bias against female leaders.”

The authors specifically dug into how CEOs foster entrepreneurship, a highly masculinized business behavior, within their business culture. They conducted regression analysis on survey data from 322 Spanish small businesses, 198 classified as family firms and 133 as nonfamily. Women represented 20 percent of the CEOs. CEOs ranked their business’s performance on five entrepreneurial traits: risk-taking, innovation, proactiveness, competitiveness, and autonomy. The survey also measured key aspects of social learning at each business, including commitment to learning, shared vision, and open-mindedness.

The analysis showed no direct effect of CEO sex on entrepreneurial orientation, and all aspects of social learning were positively related to entrepreneurship. However, there were marked differences based on CEO sex and whether the organization was a family business.

“It is not male or female leadership per se that predicts a firm's entrepreneurial orientation, but rather, whether the male or female CEO is leading a family or nonfamily business,” says Kimberly A Eddleston of Northeastern, the study’s third author. “Women leaders at family firms better leverage their business's commitment to learning and open-mindedness to support entrepreneurship than women leaders at nonfamily firms.”

“Our study therefore suggests that while women have an advantage leading family businesses, gender biases hamper female leaders' ability to transform learning into greater entrepreneurial orientation in nonfamily business,” added Franz Kellermanns of UNC Charlotte, the study’s final author.

The study gives greater context to decades of conflicting research that demonstrates a multitude of business benefits associated with female leadership but also slower growth and lower profits. The key may lie in culture — women can create more impact at businesses that emphasize at least some more traditionally feminine values. The authors also advise that couching their leadership styles in empathy and relationship-building can also help make women business leaders more effective.    

Find a full explanation of the study and how social learning and gender roles affect entrepreneurial orientation in the full text, available in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal.

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Wobbling particles in the sky

2024-01-19
The atmosphere contains many tiny solid particles. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) and the University of Göttingen in collaboration with the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in France and the university of Gothenburg, Sweden, now studied how such non-spherical particles settle in air. For this, they used a new precision apparatus equipped with high-speed cameras and a novel particle injection mechanism. Using a 3D-printer, they created particles of different shapes resembling discs of thickness as low as 50 micrometer and rods of length as high as 880 micrometers. Thanks to this setup, they could observe that particles ...

Hiring globally mobile, highly specialized workers after their firm’s failure can be a strategic move, despite a loss of legitimacy

2024-01-19
New research published in Global Strategy Journal identifies globally mobile workers with highly specialized skills as a strategic hiring strategy, due to the workers’ legitimacy and mobility after being laid off by a failure of their former employer. The study shows that laid-off workers experience comparatively high legitimacy loss if they worked in the unit or geographical location where other workers were suspected of being responsible for the corporation’s failure. As a result, their bargaining position with a prospective employer is weaker, even if their special skills ...

New study demonstrates the importance of diverse social ties to entrepreneurship, even in divided societies

2024-01-19
We’ve known for a decade that political affiliation increasingly affects Americans’ everyday lives, including where they live, whom they befriend, and whom they welcome as in-laws. A recent Cato Institute survey revealed that nearly a third of Americans worry that voicing their political views could even harm their employment. This intensifying political tribalism, especially during an election year, threatens to limit the social networks vital to entrepreneurs. However a new study, published in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, offers an example of how to connect across political entrenchment from a surprising ...

DNA origami folded into tiny motor

DNA origami folded into tiny motor
2024-01-19
Scientists have created the world’s first working nanoscale electromotor, according to research published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The science team designed a turbine engineered from DNA that is powered by hydrodynamic flow inside a nanopore, a nanometer-sized hole in a membrane of solid-state silicon nitride. The tiny motor could help spark research into future applications such as building molecular factories for useful chemicals or medical probes of molecules inside the bloodstream to detect diseases such as cancer. “Common macroscopic machines become inefficient at the nanoscale,” said ...

How firms frame training programs for gig workers boosts promotion and uptake of the programs, strengthening the bond between worker and company

2024-01-19
General skills training programs for those hired under flexible arrangements can strengthen the relationship between firm and worker, thus benefiting both groups. But for that to happen, the programs need to have strong buy-in from both managers and workers. A new study published in Strategic Management Journal found the use of relational terms to frame training programs is key: Such phrasing makes managers more likely to promote the programs and increases uptake among the gig or contract workers. The research team included Thomaz Teodorovicz of Copenhagen Business School, Sérgio Lazzarini of Western ...

How do human capital and pro-market institutions shape ambitious entrepreneurship in good and crisis times?

2024-01-19
Scholars and policymakers have highlighted the positive impact of human capital on entrepreneurial activity. Vast attention has also been directed to the beneficial role of pro-market institutions for entrepreneurship. A new article published in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal shows that the positive relation between pro-market institutions and growth aspirations is weaker for entrepreneurs with general human capital (higher education), but stronger for those with specific human capital (start-up or investment experience). ...

Important to involve both parents in breastfeeding

Important to involve both parents in breastfeeding
2024-01-19
The most important support person for women to succeed in their ambition to breastfeed is the new mother’s partner. The partner also needs to be included through more support from healthcare professionals. Together with Region Sörmland, Uppsala University has implemented a breastfeeding support programme. It provides new parents with structured breastfeeding support throughout the healthcare chain. The study is presented in an article published in the International Breastfeeding Journal. Interviews were conducted to investigate how the partner perceived the support in both the breastfeeding support group and in a control group that had ...

RIT’s Moumita Das elected as American Physical Society fellow

2024-01-19
Rochester Institute of Technology Professor Moumita Das, from the School of Physics and Astronomy, has been elected an American Physical Society Fellow for her exceptional contributions to physics. The APS Fellowship Program was created to recognize members who have made advances in physics through original research and publication, innovative contributions in the application of physics to science and technology, or teaching or service in the activities of the organization. No more than one half of 1 percent of the APS membership, excluding students, is recognized with fellowship. Only four people from Das’s field worldwide were ...

New research center to explore how ‘untapped Kingdom’ of fungi can change our world

2024-01-19
A new research centre focused on harnessing the positive powers of fungi is being established at Cranfield University with a £7.2 million injection of funding from Research England. Fungi are one of the most diverse kingdoms in all living organisms and have an estimated global monetary value of 54.57 trillion US dollars. Long used for food and medicine, only a small proportion of classified fungi species has been studied in detail and developed for industrial use – leaving an estimated three million species yet to be discovered and evaluated. To date, research of fungi has largely focused on mitigating negative effects like disease, toxins and food loss. The ...

University of Houston joins SMART Hub, a $5 million Department of Defense consortium

University of Houston joins SMART Hub, a $5 million Department of Defense consortium
2024-01-19
To tackle the challenges of a shrinking wireless spectrum, the University of Houston has joined the Spectrum Management with Adaptive and Reconfigurable Technology (SMART) Hub – a Department of Defense Spectrum Innovation Center to conduct multifaceted spectrum research to meet national defense needs. The center, led by Baylor University, is a collection of researchers, engineers and economic and policy experts looking to enact a paradigm shift in the use and management of the wireless spectrum.  SMART Hub will develop next-generation technologies for unprecedented spectrum agility, to revolutionize ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

SwRI-built instruments to monitor, provide advanced warning of space weather events

Breakthrough advances sodium-based battery design

New targeted radiation therapy shows near-complete response in rare sarcoma patients

Does physical frailty contribute to dementia?

Soccer headers and brain health: Study finds changes within folds of the brain

Decoding plants’ language of light

UNC Greensboro study finds ticks carrying Lyme disease moving into western NC

New implant restores blood pressure balance after spinal cord injury

New York City's medical specialist advantage may be an illusion, new NYU Tandon research shows

Could a local anesthetic that doesn’t impair motor function be within reach?

1 in 8 Italian cetacean strandings show evidence of fishery interactions, with bottlenose and striped dolphins most commonly affected, according to analysis across four decades of data and more than 5

In the wild, chimpanzees likely ingest the equivalent of several alcoholic drinks every day

Warming of 2°C intensifies Arctic carbon sink but weakens Alpine sink, study finds

Bronze and Iron Age cultures in the Middle East were committed to wine production

Indian adolescents are mostly starting their periods at an earlier age than 25 years ago

Temporary medical centers in Gaza known as "Medical Points" (MPs) treat an average of 117 people daily with only about 7 staff per MP

Rates of alcohol-induced deaths among the general population nearly doubled from 1999 to 2024

PLOS One study: In adolescent lab animals exposed to cocaine, High-Intensity Interval Training boosts aversion to the drug

Scientists identify four ways our bodies respond to COVID-19 vaccines

Stronger together: A new fusion protein boosts cancer immunotherapy

Hidden brain waves as triggers for post-seizure wandering

Music training can help the brain focus

Researcher develop the first hydride ion prototype battery

MIT researchers find a more precise way to edit the genome

‘Teen’ pachycephalosaur butts into fossil record

Study finds cocoa extract supplement reduced key marker of inflammation and aging

Obesity treatment with bariatric surgery vs GLP-1 receptor agonists

Nicotinamide for skin cancer chemoprevention

Novel way to ‘rev up’ brown fat burns calories, limits obesity in mice

USC Stem Cell-led team makes major advance toward building a synthetic kidney

[Press-News.org] Why family businesses get more from women leaders