Abstract
The Problem
Asia as a research context is significantly different, in many ways, from Western contexts where a majority of studies on women in leadership have been conducted. First, traditional culture and religious beliefs in Asia dictate the inferior status of women in their daily lives. Second, women’s appointment to high-ranking leadership roles in Asia has been a continuing challenge. Third, many organizations in Asia remain as gendered workplaces where cultural, religious, and organizational constraints coexist. This special issue on women entrepreneurs in Asia, therefore, makes specific contributions to research on Asian women in leadership in the context of entrepreneurship.
The Solution
The purpose of this special issue is to investigate women entrepreneurs’ motivations, challenges, and opportunities in eight Asian countries (China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam). The special issue provides insights into developing the potential of aspiring women entrepreneurs who are set in rapidly developing Asian countries where traditional cultural and religious expectations and modernized values coexist. Despite challenges and difficulties that women entrepreneurs face, the opportunities that they create in business development can serve as a model for aspiring women entrepreneurs in Asia and other countries.
The Stakeholders
As women entrepreneurs’ challenges are of global interest, this special issue represents an effort to transcend national boundaries in understanding how to address the challenges they face. Scholars and practitioners who are interested in international Human Resource Development can better understand how Asia’s fast-growing economies and culture have influenced women entrepreneurs in positive and negative ways.
As the book titled The Future is Asian (Khanna, 2019) indicates, Asia is the fastest growing region in the world in productivity, investment, technology, and innovation. However, gender inequality and underutilization of female talent are deeply rooted and widely spread in Asian countries (McKinsey Global Institute, 2018). The World Economic Forum’s (2018) gender gap report ranked China 103rd, India 108th, Indonesia 85th, Japan 110th, South Korea (Korea) 115th, Malaysia 101st, Thailand 73rd, and Vietnam 77th out of 149 countries in the combined evaluation of economic participation, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment in terms of women’s status compared with that of male counterparts. Asia’s gender gap index is alarming because almost all countries, except the Philippines (8th), occupy low rankings in women’s status, despite the region’s rapid economic development potential.
Asian Context
Asia as a research context (Barkema et al., 2015) is significantly different, in many ways, from Western contexts where a majority of studies on women in leadership have been conducted (Badura et al., 2018; Joshi et al., 2015; Madsen & Scribner, 2017). First, traditional culture (e.g., Confucianism) and religious beliefs (e.g., Hinduism) in Asia dictate the inferior status of women in their daily lives. Second, women’s appointment to high-ranking leadership roles in Asia has been a continuing challenge. Third, many organizations in Asia remain as gendered workplaces where cultural, religious, and organizational constraints coexist. This special issue on women entrepreneurs in Asia, therefore, makes specific contributions to research on Asian women in leadership in the context of entrepreneurship.
According to McKinsey Global Institute’s (2018) report on women’s equality in Asia, the region can benefit greatly by advancing women’s participation in economic activities and thereby enhancing economic development. Although there has been a noticeable increase in women entrepreneurs, there is an urgent need to develop and promote women entrepreneurs for sustainable economic growth in Asia (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2018; Mastercard, 2018). In Korea, for instance, women entrepreneurs make up only 6.8% (CEOs) and 5.6% (founders) of a total of 35,187 start-ups in 2017 (Korea Venture Business Association, 2018). In India, 45% of the venture companies are owned by women, which calls for effective training and skill development to bolster entrepreneurial awareness (Gali, 2016). In China, women make up only 20% of total entrepreneurs (Wang, 2011).
Women entrepreneurs in general face challenges as business owners to survive in fiercely competitive domestic and global markets and as women to strike a balance between work and life (Bullough & Renko, 2017). Despite challenges and difficulties that women entrepreneurs face, the opportunities that they create in business development can serve as a model for aspiring women entrepreneurs in Asia and other countries. In this context, the purpose of this special issue was to investigate women entrepreneurs’ motivations, challenges, and opportunities in eight Asian countries, develop evidence-based strategies for organizations and governments to devise policies and programs to support the development of women entrepreneurs, and provide implications for Human Resource Development (HRD) research and practice.
Conceptual Background
Critical to this special issue on women entrepreneurs in Asia is an understanding of the conceptual background of definitions of entrepreneurs and their motivational factors. This conceptual background helps us understand different types of women entrepreneurs in Asia including women CEOs in start-ups (Korea), second-generation women successors in family-owned businesses (China), urban women entrepreneurs (India), women social entrepreneurs (Japan), and innovative women entrepreneurs (Thailand) and their motivations to create, own, and/or manage businesses.
Definitions
Entrepreneurship refers to the identification, evaluation, and exploitation of new business opportunities (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). When it comes to the local words for entrepreneurs in rapidly emerging countries, siying qiye zhu in China, vaishyas in India, and chang-up-ga in Korea, for instance, are not necessarily favorable to entrepreneurs (Gupta et al., 2014). Despite the differences in defining entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship research emphasizes aspects of risk-taking and innovation in business creation and development. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defined entrepreneurs as “those (business owners) who seek to generate value, through the creation or expansion of economic activity, by identifying and exploiting new products, processes, or markets” (Ahmad & Seymour, 2008, p. 14). We define entrepreneurs as those who start, own, and/or manage start-ups and small–medium enterprises (SMEs) on products, processes, or markets with innovation and risk-taking.
Research (Carter et al., 2007; Shane, 2008) indicates that gender is an important factor that affects motivation for business start-ups and types of challenges that entrepreneurs face, and, therefore, women entrepreneurs are conceptualized from a different perspective than men entrepreneurs: motherhood and social norms such as gender roles were important factors in understanding women’s entrepreneurship (Brush et al., 2009). Entrepreneurship, therefore, is a gendered phenomenon and entrepreneurial activities occur within systems of socially constructed and shared beliefs about gender, which affect women entrepreneurs’ motivations for business creation and development and types of challenges that they face (Henry et al., 2016; Jennings & Brush, 2013).
Motivational Factors
Motivational factors influence women entrepreneurs to create, own, and/or run businesses with innovative mindsets and are divided into necessity-based push and opportunity-based pull factors (Jennings & Brush, 2013).
Push factors force women to give up their current work due to their family’s economic needs, gender inequality, and work and family conflict (Zgheib, 2018). Women entrepreneurs are more likely to be motivated by push factors than men (Jennings & Brush, 2013). The need for increasing family income motivates women to start a business, while men’s entrepreneurial intention was not influenced by the family income factor (Allen & Curington, 2014). Gender inequality increases the necessity of women to quit their jobs and to choose self-employment (Reavley & Lituchy, 2008). Women’s career opportunities are often hindered by marriage, child care, and the glass ceiling, which lead women to leave their jobs and start a business (Zgheib, 2018). Women who pursue a balance between work and family tend to choose self-employment to reduce work and family conflict (Agarwal & Lenka, 2015).
Pull factors attract women into entrepreneurship and influence decisions on self-employment: a desire for career advancement, a need for independence, self-efficacy, and family background (Zgheib, 2018). A desire for career advancement is an important motivational factor for women’s business ownership across cultures (Tan, 2008). Many women are motivated to become entrepreneurs in pursuing independence (Alam et al., 2012). Women entrepreneurs’ self-efficacy is considered a significant predictor of women’s entrepreneurial intentions that are more affected by self-efficacy than men (Shinnar et al., 2014). Entrepreneurial self-efficacy increases when women are exposed to entrepreneurial role models (Austin & Nauta, 2016). Women who have a family business tradition (e.g., fathers or husbands) are more likely to start a business than women without family background (Sasu & Sasu, 2015).
Purpose of the Special Issue
The purpose of this special issue was to examine women entrepreneurs’ motivations, challenges, and opportunities in business start-ups and development. Initially, we chose seven Asian countries (China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand) on the basis of our research collaboration on a book titled Current Perspectives on Asian Women in Leadership (Cho et al., 2017) and added Vietnam due to its recent noticeable economic development and strong presence of entrepreneurs in the country (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2018).
To lead the development of this special issue, we asked three broad research questions to all participating authors: What motivated women entrepreneurs to start/own/manage a business? What challenges did they face in business development? What opportunities contributed to their business success? These three questions are broad enough so that authors can address country-specific questions that are relevant to their unique cultural context including: “Why do women enter into entrepreneurship in Korea,” “How do mentoring programs help women become entrepreneurs in India?,” “Who are innovative women entrepreneurs in Thailand?,” and “Why are women social entrepreneurs increasing in number in Japan?”
As women entrepreneurs’ challenges are of global interest, this special issue represents an effort to transcend national boundaries in understanding how to address the challenges they face. Scholars and practitioners who are interested in international HRD can better understand how Asia’s fast-growing economies and culture have influenced women entrepreneurs in positive and negative ways. We provide insights into developing the potential of aspiring women entrepreneurs who are set in rapidly developing Asian countries where traditional cultural and religious expectations and modernized values coexist.
Overview of the Special Issue
Women entrepreneurship in Asia is gaining traction as entrepreneurship development is directly related to a country’s economic development, transformational changes to society, and, most importantly, women empowerment. Women entrepreneurship development presents women entrepreneurs with opportunities to not only participate in economic activities but also help alleviate overall poverty (Tambunan, 2009). In this special issue, we bring forward the stories of women entrepreneurs from eight Asian countries that are intertwined with HRD themes.
In this Preface, the definitions of entrepreneurship and women entrepreneurs in Asian contexts establish the foundation for this Special Issue and acts as a conduit for connecting the different countries to entrepreneurial motivations, challenges, and opportunities. Article 2 (China) provides a unique perspective of the challenges the second-generation women successors face in Chinese family-owned businesses. Through in-depth qualitative interviews, this article delineates the contribution of HRD toward the development of the second-generation women successors in management, leadership, and entrepreneurship.
Article 3 (India) tells rich stories from urban women entrepreneurs in India through interviews on the importance of multiple developmental relationships and how those contributed to their career success. This article contributes to the presentation of the critical ingredients needed to develop formal mentoring programs for women employees who leave the safe haven of corporate India to start their own entrepreneurial ventures.
Article 4 (Indonesia) investigates the various factors that influence the behaviors of necessity- and growth-oriented women entrepreneurs in Indonesia. The study findings are informative to policy makers and HRD in organizations in creating coaching and developmental strategies for women entrepreneurs.
Article 5 (Japan) explores the connection between women social entrepreneurship, authentic entrepreneurial leadership, and transformative learning theories in a Japanese context through an extensive literature review and concludes with HRD implications for women social entrepreneurship development.
Article 6 (South Korea) offers a case study of three outstanding Korean women entrepreneurs in the IT industry that investigated what motivated the women entrepreneurs to start a business, what challenges they faced, and what opportunities they created for success. The study findings provide recommendations for the government and HRD to create a system to support the development of aspiring women entrepreneurs.
Article 7 (Malaysia) presents a model of self-leadership development process including cognitive (internal) and environmental (external) influences on self-leadership development for Malaysian women entrepreneurs. The study findings suggest how HRD practitioners can design programs to nurture and foster women entrepreneurs’ self-leadership.
Using a phenomenological approach, Article 8 (Thailand) highlights the lived experiences of opportunity-driven, innovative Thai women entrepreneurs and the challenges they face as they engage in changing Thai values and culture regarding gender roles and social norms. This article concludes with a learning and development framework for facilitating and preparing innovative women entrepreneurs.
Article 9 (Vietnam) shows that despite a higher level of Vietnamese women’s ownership in the economy, they face challenges including a widening gender gap, income gaps, and work–life imbalance. Twelve women entrepreneurs from different industries were interviewed to explore their lived experiences in motivations and challenges in their business creation. Understanding women entrepreneurship in Vietnam provides implications for HRD from individual, organizational, and national perspectives.
In the concluding article of this Special Issue, lessons learned from the diversity of women entrepreneurs’ motivations, challenges, and opportunities in the context of the eight Asian countries are discussed.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.