Gender differences in growth of Spanish university spin-offs

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that the female-owned university spin-off organizations (USOs) have a similar resource endowment and, as a consequence, growth rates similar to the male-owned USOs. Design/methodology/approach A unique and original longitudinal data set, which is an unbalanced panel, consisting of 120 Spanish USOs over the period 2001-2010 has been constructed. The methodology includes the analysis of mean differences (t-test) and dynamic panel data models. Findings The results confirmed that there are no gender differences in either the firms’ initial resource endowment or in the preference for industries. There is no gender effect on the USOs’ growth, but the initial endowment resources matter. Thus the financial, human and technological resources have a positive effect on the USOs’ growth. This evidence suggests that the USOs’ context may mitigate the initial resource endowment of the female-owned firms and their preferences for traditional industries, showing similar rates of growth than male-owned USOs. Research limitations/implications Owners’ gender has been used as a proxy for founders’ gender. Also, only USOs included in the SABI database have been considered as part of the sample; the significant number of USOs that did not reveal information about their owners have been discarded. Practical implications It is important to continue supporting academic entrepreneurship, as in the university context, firm growth is not affected by gender differences. However, given that the percentage of female owners in university entrepreneurship is still lower compared to entrepreneurship in general, the universities’ entrepreneur programmes targeting women must adopt a gendered perspective. Originality/value Literature on USOs has traditionally analyzed the firm-specific characteristics that impact their growth without considering the influence of the owners’ gender. In this paper, an attempt to fill this gap has been made using a sample of 120 Spanish USOs and by applying the dynamic panel data methodology. In particular, it has been argued that the university context from which USOs emerge allows female-owned USOs to have a similar resource endowment and, as a consequence, a similar growth when compared to male-owned USOs.

Women entrepreneurship in STEM fields: literature review and future research avenues

“…Independently from comparing women and men academics' experience, or only the former, the overall analysis shows that academic entrepreneurship is unanimously considered to be a field in which some gender gaps are reduced in comparison to other activity sectorsfor example women and men academics show similar levels of human capital, similar attitudes, pressure and motivation (Rosa and Dawson 2006) thus allowing scholars to correct the sampling bias we have in traditional studies on women entrepreneurship. In line with this, Rodríguez-Gulías et al (2018) find that firms' growth rate for women and men's university spin-offs is comparable and that the technological, human and financial resources positively affect growth. These results also contribute to underlining how important the academic entrepreneurship context is to reduce gender differences in business, thus enhancing the importance of investigating the role of incubatorsa context able to offer services, advice, mentoring, and access to finance to entrepreneurs.…”

“…the adoption of an intersectional approach that takes into consideration seniority and gender (Rosa and Dawson 2006) as well as age, ethnicity and career-stage (Karataş-Özkan and Chell 2015). Furthermore, there is the identification of factors that contribute to avoid gender differences in firms' growth and other performance measurement in academic entrepreneurship (Rodríguez-Gulías et al 2018), and the analysis of ways in which "the processes, structures and discourses of academic entrepreneurship are constructed and gendered" (Fältholm et al 2010, p. 60). On the other hand, the practical implications still appear to be general, mainly addressing the importance of improving the opportunities for women's career progression (Abreu and Grinevich 2017), and also the need to foster gender equality programmes in universities (Karataş-Özkan and Chell 2015).…”

Psychological capital and entrepreneurship: gender differences

“…Gender and entrepreneurship have been a major topic of study ever, as it emerged in the eighties (Klyver, 2011; Ventura and Quero, 2013; Bertelsen et al , 2017; Outsios and Farooqi, 2017; Rodríguez-Gulías et al , 2018). Although the number of works on this subject has increased over the past two decades, the gender factor in entrepreneurship continues to be relatively misunderstood.…”

Gender, STEM women and entrepreneurship: a review and future research directions

“…Generally, gendered analyses remain scarce, however, Cidlinská’s (2019) qualitative research in the Czech Republic explores how gender and the professional identity construction of the “proper scientist” may deter early career women academics from AE. Recent findings confirm, however, that when STEM women do engage in AE, their spin-out firms enjoy similar growth performance (Rodríguez-Gulías et al. , 2018) but may face challenges attracting venture capital investment, unless they have secured parent University investment and have full professors within the founding team (Lauto et al.…”