Human capabilities and firm growth; an investigation of women-owned established micro and small firms in Ireland
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Author(s)
Costin, Yvonne
Igoe, Josephine
Flynn, Antoinette
Birdthistle, Naomi
Hynes, Briga
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2021
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Firm growth has been studied extensively, yet limited attention has been devoted specifically to growth in women-owned firms. Women entrepreneurship studies to date has focused largely on the start-up rather than the growth stage. Given the dearth of research with this focus and the recognized prime role of the entrepreneur in driving firm growth, this study focuses on the specific human capabilities driving firm growth, through a survey of 172 micro and small women-owned established firms in Ireland. Regression analysis highlights that specific human capabilities (education, managerial experiences and being team-led) strongly ...
View more >Firm growth has been studied extensively, yet limited attention has been devoted specifically to growth in women-owned firms. Women entrepreneurship studies to date has focused largely on the start-up rather than the growth stage. Given the dearth of research with this focus and the recognized prime role of the entrepreneur in driving firm growth, this study focuses on the specific human capabilities driving firm growth, through a survey of 172 micro and small women-owned established firms in Ireland. Regression analysis highlights that specific human capabilities (education, managerial experiences and being team-led) strongly influence firm-financial growth. These human capabilities are leveraged to maximize financial growth, but not employment growth. Therefore, employment as a measure of growth may be a barrier to access policy supports and initiatives for this cohort of entrepreneurs. We contribute a more nuanced understanding of growth from a resource-based view, in women-owned established micro and small firms.
View less >
View more >Firm growth has been studied extensively, yet limited attention has been devoted specifically to growth in women-owned firms. Women entrepreneurship studies to date has focused largely on the start-up rather than the growth stage. Given the dearth of research with this focus and the recognized prime role of the entrepreneur in driving firm growth, this study focuses on the specific human capabilities driving firm growth, through a survey of 172 micro and small women-owned established firms in Ireland. Regression analysis highlights that specific human capabilities (education, managerial experiences and being team-led) strongly influence firm-financial growth. These human capabilities are leveraged to maximize financial growth, but not employment growth. Therefore, employment as a measure of growth may be a barrier to access policy supports and initiatives for this cohort of entrepreneurs. We contribute a more nuanced understanding of growth from a resource-based view, in women-owned established micro and small firms.
View less >
Journal Title
Small Enterprise Research
Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Note
This publication has been entered in Griffith Research Online as an advanced online version.
Subject
Banking, finance and investment
Marketing