Gender and university spinouts in the UK: Geography, governance and growth - Infographics

This summary offers an overview of the university spinouts landscape in the UK and where women feature in the geography, governance and growth of these companies. The results are part of a wider project, funded by the EPSRC’s Inclusion Matters programme, looking at the participation of women scientists, engineers and mathematicians in spinouts. This analysis is based on 789 active spinouts in the UK originating from 82 academic institutions

Gender and university spinouts in the UK: Geography, governance and growth

This report provides an overview of the UK spinouts landscape from a gender perspective. It is part of a wider project, funded by the EPSRC’s Inclusion Matters programme, looking at the participation of women scientists, engineers and mathematicians in university spinout companies. The results examine sex-disaggregated data on the geography, governance and growth of these university spinout companies. The findings of this report are timely and important since little is known about spinouts from a gender perspective. This is despite evidence that women are greatly underrepresented on patent applications (14% according to Elsevier), spinouts are overwhelmingly founded or co-founded by men (Jarboe et al), and women only make up one in three entrepreneurs more generally (Rose Review). Addressing women’s underrepresentation in spinout companies is thus not only a matter of social justice, but could also address a critical element of the UK’s Industrial Strategy, which aims to increase business and growth through research and innovation.

Gender Diversity Index - preliminary considerations and results

In this report we outline the preliminary concept for the Gender Diversity Index.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 665851

Factors related to knowledge creation and career outcomes in French academia: The case of the human resource management field

In response to the increasing discourse on academic careers and knowledge creation, we develop and test a model predicting research performance in the field of management outside the Anglo-Saxon countries. Based on comprehensive data of French academics, we examine various factors – career-related and demographic factors like gender – that play a role in determining academic research performance in an increasingly global academia. The role of the English language is positively related to citations but not to the volume of papers or their global/national recognition. Higher institutional reputations were positively associated to number of papers, citations, and national recognition. Strikingly, there was no relationship with global recognition, suggesting that the reputation of institutions plays a role, but only insofar as the national context and without spillover into the global academic scene. Finally, men were over-performing in both publications’ quality and quantity. Career experience had a positive effect, although this reduced gradually over time. Our findings can help individuals’ career decision-making and institutional investment in human-capital. We offer an original contribution to facilitate the understanding of factors that may influence research performance outside the Anglo-Saxon academia by opening of the black box of knowledge development, exposing the role of academic publications and recognition

Gender vs. sex

Gender research goes beyond adding sex as an independent, explanatory category. To conduct gender research in the field of business and management, therefore, it is important to apply a more sophisticated understanding of gender that resonates with contemporary gender theory. This entails taking the social construction of gender and its implications for research into consideration. Seeing gender as a social construct means that the perception of “women” and “men,” of “femininity/ties” and “masculinity/ties,” is the outcome of an embodied social practice. Gender research is commonly sensitive to notions of how power is reproduced and challenges concepts such as “hegemonic masculinity” and “heteronormativity.” The first highlights power relations between gender groups, as well as the different types of existing masculinities. The latter emphasizes the pressure to rely on a binary concept of “women” and “men” and how this is related to heterosexuality, desire, and the body. Gender research needs to avoid the pitfalls of a narrow, essentialist concept of “women” and “men” that draws on this binary understanding of gender. It is also important to notice that not all women (or men) share the same experiences. The critique of Black feminists and scholars from the global South promoted the idea of intersectionality and postcolonialism within gender research. Intersectionality addresses the entanglement of gender with other social categories, such as age, class, disability, race, or religion, while postcolonial approaches criticize the neglect of theory and methodology originating in the global South and question the prevalence of concepts from the global North. Various insights from gender theory inform business and management research in various ways. Concepts such as the “gendered organization” or “inequality regime” can be seen as substantial contributions of gender theory to organization theory. Analyzing different forms of masculinities and exploring ways in which gender is undone within organizations (or whether a supposedly gender-neutral organization promotes a masculine norm) can offer thought-provoking insights into organizational processes. Embracing queer theory, intersectionality, and postcolonial approaches in designing research allows for a broader image of the complex social reality. Altogether management studies benefit from sound, theoretically well-grounded gender research

Prone to "care"? : Relating motivations to economic and social performance among women social entrepreneurs in Europe

Purpose. Little attention has been given specifically to the experience of women social entrepreneurs despite the assumption they are prone to ‘care’, and even less to their motivations or their selfperception of success. This article provides an insight into the relationship between motivations and social and economic performance among women social entrepreneurs in 10 EU countries. Design/methodology/approach. This article classifies the motivations of women social entrepreneurs, drawing on the results of a survey conducted (n=380) by the European Women’s Lobby. The article then examines how these motivations relate to self-perceptions of social and economic performance. Findings. In addition to being driven by self-interest and prosocial motivations, women social entrepreneurs also seek to develop alternative business models. Where a social mission is central, women are likely to feel successful in meeting their social aim; however, there is a strong negative relationship between self-interested motivations and revenue. Research limitations/implications. This analysis relies on perceptual and self-reported data; therefore, more objective measures should be considered for further research, possibly combined with a longitudinal design. Another limitation of this paper lies in the non-random sampling strategy employed to identify a hard-toreach population such as women social entrepreneurs. Practical implications. The findings provide a better understanding of the motivations of women social entrepreneurs. This may be useful in assisting funding or support organizations, as well as social investors, evaluate where to best invest resources. In addition, a more nuanced understanding of motivations among women social entrepreneurs can inform policies aimed at supporting women social entrepreneurs, without necessarily being bound by the expectation to maximise economic and/or social outcomes. Originality/value. This article demonstrates the centrality of the social mission for women social entrepreneurs. The results also identify ‘seeking an alternative business model’ as a key motivation among women social entrepreneurs, thereby breaking existing conceptualisations of entrepreneurial motivations on a binary spectrum as either ‘self-interested’ or ‘prosocial’. The article also shows that having other than prosocial motivations for becoming a social entrepreneur does not necessarily lead to higher economic revenue

Sensor-based proximity metrics for team research: A validation study across three organizational contexts

Wearable sensors are becoming increasingly popular in organizational research. Although validation studies that examine sensor data in conjunction with established social and psychological constructs are becoming more frequent, they are usually limited for two reasons: first, most validation studies are carried out under laboratory settings. Only a handful of studies have been carried out in real-world organizational environments. Second, for those studies carried out in field settings, reported findings are derived from a single case only, thus seriously limiting the possibility of studying the influence of contextual factors on sensor-based measurements. This article presents a validation study of expressive and instrumental ties across 9 relatively small R&D teams. The convergent validity of Bluetooth (BT) detections is reported for friendship and adviceseeking ties under three organizational contexts: research labs, private companies and universitybased teams. Results show that, in general, BT detections correlated strongly with self-reported measurements. However, the organizational context affects both the strength of the observed correlation and its direction. Whereas advice-seeking ties generally occur in close spatial proximity and are best identified in university environments, friendship relationships occur at a greater spatial distance, especially in research labs. We conclude with recommendations for fine-tuning the validity of sensor measurements by carefully examining the opportunities for organizational embedding in relation to the research question and collecting complementary data through mixedmethod research designs

Determinants of transnational social capital: An opportunity-investment-ability perspective

This study suggests that it is critical for executives to develop transnational social capital (TSC), or professional relationships and ties that span national borders. We first provide a conceptual framework and careful operationalization of TSC that differentiates between bonding and bridging forms of social capital. We then examine the effect of three key determinants—opportunity, investment, and ability—on the TSC of executives. Using detailed survey data on 227 executives, our analysis suggests that international experience, investment in communicating with cross-border ties, and cosmopolitan ability have direct effects on overall TSC. We further demonstrate that international experience and cosmopolitan ability affect both bridging and bonding, but that investment in cross-border communication only affects bridging social capital. The study proposes that social capital is becoming more and more transnational as connections, interactions, and transactions increasingly span national borders, which has implications for international business and human resource management (HRM). Given our findings, it would make sense for global organizations to pay more attention to these, if they would like their members to develop this resource. We point out benefits to organizations and individuals

The violently gender-equal Nordic welfare states

This primarily conceptual chapter interrogates violence and gender equality, and the relationship between these, in the Nordic welfare states. It discusses what violence is and asks what happens when we focus primarily on violence as a central question of the analysis. It builds on previous collaborative work and contributes to the debate on gender power relations in the Nordic countries by conceptualising violence as an organising principle, and simultaneously placing violence at the centre of gender relations and as a relatively independent domain. It shows how the ‘violently gender-equal’ Nordic welfare states can be understood beyond the ‘Nordic paradox’