The global field of multi-family offices: An institutionalist perspective

We apply the notion of the organisational field to internationally operating multi-family offices. These organisations specialise on the preservation of enterprising and geographically dispersed families’ fortunes. They provide their services across generations and countries. Based on secondary data of Bloomberg’s Top 50 Family Offices, we show that they constitute a global organisational field that comprises two clusters of homogeneity. Clients may decide between two different configurations of activities, depending on their preferences regarding asset management, resource management, family management, and service architecture. The findings also reveal that multi-family offices make relatively similar value propositions all over the world. The distinctiveness of the clusters within the field is not driven by the embeddedness of the multi-family offices in different national environments or their various degrees of international experience. Rather, it is weakly affected by two out of four possible value propositions, namely the exclusiveness and the transparency of services

Climate change adaptation among female-led micro, small, and medium enterprises in semiarid areas: a case study from Kenya

This chapter contributes to the literature on private sector adaptation by empirically exploring how female-led micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSMEs) in Kenya’s semiarid lands (SALs) experience and respond to climate risk. The chapter argues that strong sociocultural orientations around gender roles and resource use and access not only confine female-led MSMEs to sectors that experience higher exposure to climate risk – most notably agriculture – but also trigger more pronounced barriers to building resilience within their businesses, including reduced access to land, capital, markets, new technology, and educational opportunities. Faced by these barriers, female entrepreneurs may pursue unsustainable forms of coping, as part of which business activity is scaled back through reduced profits, loss of business, and the sale of valuable business assets. Such strategies may help enterprises to cope in the short term but may undermine longer-term MSME adaptive capacity. Social networks, such as women’s groups and table banking initiatives, appear to be crucial adaptation tools. Additionally, a strong dependency exists between household resilience and business resilience, implying that building resilience at the household level could support adaptive capacity among female-led MSMEs. Supporting the adaptive capacity of women in business should be a policy priority

Encouraging female entrepreneurship in Jordan: environmental factors, obstacles and challenges

The number of female entrepreneurs and their contribution to the economy is steadily rising. Yet research suggests that female entrepreneurs face more challenges and barriers than their male counterparts. This is expected to be even more prevalent in Islamic contexts, which are characterised by conservative and patriarchal societies. In this research, 254 female business students from a private and a public university responded to a questionnaire that gauges their perceptions about potential barriers to entrepreneurship in Jordan and whether the business education they are receiving helps to prepare them for future entrepreneurial activity. Our results help to form a basis on which a deeper understanding of the phenomena can be achieved through more in depth future research. Among the main environmental factors that worry potential female entrepreneurs are the weakness of Jordanian economy, lack of finance, fear of risk, gender inequality and inability to maintain a work and private life balance. Our results also show that students are really not aware of the opportunities available to them and are unable to make a proper assessment. We call on both universities and the Jordanian government to put more emphasis on practical entrepreneurial education and encouraging women to play a much more active role within the workforce

Leveraging the macro-level environment to balance work and life: an analysis of female entrepreneurs' job satisfaction

This study investigates the interactive effect of female entrepreneurs’ experience of work–life imbalance and gender-egalitarian macro-level conditions on their job satisfaction, with the prediction that the negative linear relationship between work–life imbalance and job satisfaction may be buffered by the presence of women-friendly action resources, emancipative values, and civic entitlements. Data pertaining to 7,392 female entrepreneurs from 44 countries offer empirical support for these predictions. Female entrepreneurs who are preoccupied with their ability to fulfill both work and life responsibilities are more likely to maintain a certain level of job satisfaction, even if they experience significant work–life imbalances, to the extent that they operate in supportive macro-level environments

Environment, Education and Entrepreneurial Intentions of Women in the MENA Region: Evidences from Jordan

Female entrepreneurship is a growing segment in the context of developing countries and has the potential to become a driving force for economic development. However, research suggests that females are less inclined towards entrepreneurship when compared to their male counterparts. This fact is related to a complex mix of causes such as the belief that entrepreneurship is a male domain, certain conditions within the economic and social environment and a general lack of confidence with regards to succeeding in such activities. Middle Eastern societies are predominantly patriarchal in nature. The role of women in society is quite marked and the reluctance of women to take a more decisive engagement in entrepreneurship may be reinforced by conservative, societal traditions. A supportive education system has the potential to act as a catalyst to encourage active female participation in the entrepreneurial domain. A sample of two hundred fifty-four female business students from two universities in Jordan were asked to evaluate various factors within the Jordanian entrepreneurial ecosystem, including the business education they are currently receiving. The results indicated that a strong supportive education system to some extent may reduce the perception of potential barriers for entrepreneurship, but the overall impact can be limited. Conversely, an educational system distant and lacking of supportive and concrete initiatives can deeply affect and worsen the fears of engaging in entrepreneurship amongst female students

Cross-cultural variations in climate for autonomy, stress and organizational productivity relationships:A comparison of Chinese and UK manufacturing organizations

Cross-cultural researchers have questioned the extent to which European– American management practices can be transported to major markets in Asia, such as the People’s Republic of China. Applying employee involvement theory, we examined the relationships between climate for autonomy, work demands climate, employee stress and organizational productivity in a crossnational study of 51 UK and 104 Chinese manufacturing organizations. We predicted and found that climate for autonomy was positively and negatively related to stress in the Chinese and UK contexts, respectively. The interaction of climate for autonomy and work demands climate was significant: climate for autonomy was positively related to organizational productivity only when work demands climate was low

Measuring female entrepreneurs’ happiness from online feedback

© 2021, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.Entrepreneurship provides an important solution to the unemployment problem. This is also very important in economic growth. It has financial, psychological and social risks while taking the situation into consideration. In addition, women’s participation in the work force has a vital importance in Turkey’s national income. Nearly 8.5% of women are in management, or in decision-making positions. It is important to measure happiness of these female workforce in order to understand and manage their feelings. Our previous study investigated successful women happiness and ideas about being entrepreneurial women in Turkey to discover the factors of the happy women entrepreneurs’ success in business life. In this research, depending from the previous study, we measure Turkish women entrepreneurs’ happiness by using the Turkish happiness dictionary, which was developed a set of normative emotional ratings for the Turkish language and culture. We re-collect 26 Turkish successful women entrepreneurs’ online feedback by using the extracted categories of women entrepreneurs from a different 3rd party organization. Natural language processing methods and text mining are used. We automatically measure the average happiness of each feedback of a woman and the average happiness of Turkish successful female entrepreneurs. In addition, we cluster scores according to categories which present the common factors contributing to the success of happy female entrepreneurs