Over the past few years much has been written about the rapid spread of various types of firm networking, the area of women entrepreneurs＇ networks and small business entrepreneurship is still a challenging research ...Over the past few years much has been written about the rapid spread of various types of firm networking, the area of women entrepreneurs＇ networks and small business entrepreneurship is still a challenging research field. This paper reviews literature addressing women business owners from the network perspective of understanding their contribution to the existing knowledge. The paper makes use of a discourse analysis to examine a selection of empirical research articles from 2000 to 2012 on women networks in entrepreneurship research in order to convey the key concept, main findings, key contribution, and the methodology. Moreover, it identifies in a broader literature the hegemonic statements with regard to women and networks in entrepreneurship and default of the existing research. Main findings based on the discourse analysis reveal six hegemonic statements; women businesses have higher discontinuance rates and one suggested reason for this problem is that women lack of networking, women have a less diverse network, women are disadvantaged compared to men and therefore cannot network effectively, women are more likely to network with men, women favor ＂strong ties＂ and women network size is small. Methodologically, the current status of research on networks and entrepreneurship validates that most of the knowledge is gained through cross-sectional surveys. Entrepreneurs may reveal their thoughts, their experience and reflections only if the relationship between the researcher and the researched is symmetrical. Qualitative approaches are suggested in order to ＂tap＂ the voice. Moreover, researcher hopes that the literature review on women entrepreneurial network will give some inspiration to researchers.展开更多
文摘Over the past few years much has been written about the rapid spread of various types of firm networking, the area of women entrepreneurs＇ networks and small business entrepreneurship is still a challenging research field. This paper reviews literature addressing women business owners from the network perspective of understanding their contribution to the existing knowledge. The paper makes use of a discourse analysis to examine a selection of empirical research articles from 2000 to 2012 on women networks in entrepreneurship research in order to convey the key concept, main findings, key contribution, and the methodology. Moreover, it identifies in a broader literature the hegemonic statements with regard to women and networks in entrepreneurship and default of the existing research. Main findings based on the discourse analysis reveal six hegemonic statements; women businesses have higher discontinuance rates and one suggested reason for this problem is that women lack of networking, women have a less diverse network, women are disadvantaged compared to men and therefore cannot network effectively, women are more likely to network with men, women favor ＂strong ties＂ and women network size is small. Methodologically, the current status of research on networks and entrepreneurship validates that most of the knowledge is gained through cross-sectional surveys. Entrepreneurs may reveal their thoughts, their experience and reflections only if the relationship between the researcher and the researched is symmetrical. Qualitative approaches are suggested in order to ＂tap＂ the voice. Moreover, researcher hopes that the literature review on women entrepreneurial network will give some inspiration to researchers.
