No abstract

Although growing in volume, women’s entrepreneurship is still significantly underrepresented relative to the entrepreneurial activities of men. Moreover, in most of the contexts, quantitative performance of female entrepreneurs are worse, compared to the ones achieved by their male counterparts. Though certainly important, knowing only the quantitative performance of female entrepreneurs is not enough for improving their competitiveness and socio-economic status. Quantitative performance are the results of certain qualitative features of women’s entrepreneurial activities, which are often neglected in the public discourse. The aim of the study is to provide an overview of the sectoral structure of women’s entrepreneurship from the less studied contexts, such Serbian environment is. Working with data provided by the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, the study empirically tests and supports the hypotheses that there are differences in the sectoral distribution of female and male entrepreneurs in the Republic of Serbia, with Serbian female entrepreneurs being overrepresented in the services sector. Moreover, the results show women’s observed participation in the services sector is significantly higher than the one which would be expected given the sectoral structure of the general population of entrepreneurs. The paper discusses its theoretical and practical contributions as well.

Purpose The paper examines gender differences in the performance and financing strategies of female and male entrepreneurs in the Republic of Serbia. The aim of this study is to explore the gender dimension – a much under-researched aspect of entrepreneurship in the Republic of Serbia – and to link the findings with those of other environments. Design/methodology/approach To explore gender-based differences in entrepreneurial activity, a random sample of 327 units was drawn from the Serbian Business Registers Agency’s Register of Companies. In total, 101 completed questionnaires were received. The chi-square test of association was used to assess the relationship between two categorical variables, while the non-parametric Mann–Whitney U test was used to assess the statistical importance of the differences between groups of female and male entrepreneurs. The relationship between the performance and different sources of financing was assessed by multiple regression analysis. Findings The results confirm the existence of a gender gap in the net profit, employment growth rate, return on assets (ROA) and in use of various types of alternative financing sources. The evidence shows that those male entrepreneurs who use personal funds achieve lower levels of net profit and ROA compared to those who use internal business sources. Lower ROA is also achieved by those male entrepreneurs who use alternative sources of financing, relative to those who do not use these sources. Female entrepreneurs who applied for bank loans realized higher net profit value compared to those who did not apply for a loan. Moreover, female entrepreneurs who use some kind of state-supported funding achieve higher ROA than those who do not. Other gender differences found regarding the various aspects of the financing practices lacked statistical significance. Originality/value Although the generalizability of part of the findings is weakened due to the lack of statistical significance, most of the expected gender differences were found to exist at the sample level. This encourages further studies of similarities and differences between female and male entrepreneurs’ financing strategies and their impact on business performance. This is particularly important for the environments in which the gender aspect of entrepreneurial activity is under-researched.

The paper presents research on strategic planning practice of Serbian entrepreneurs. More specifically, it explores main features of the currently implemented strategic planning activity and its impact on financial performance of Serbian entrepreneurs. As female entrepreneurship continues to grow and is becoming more important economic and social issue, the research also takes into account the gender aspect. Building on literature review, hypotheses were developed and then tested on a random sample of 101 respondents. Main results suggest that strategic planning is underdeveloped management activity of Serbian entrepreneurs, primarily in terms of its long-time horizon, formality and use of objective data and analysis. Short-tem, informal and based on personal experience, feelings and intuition is planning of both female and male entrepreneurs without any statistically important difference based on gender. At the same time, as the strategic planning is more developed, the better are the financial performance of Serbian entrepreneurs. Besides contributing to the strategic management and entrepreneurship literature, the paper highlights certain aspects of these fields that should be emphasized in academic courses and training programs.