The aim of this paper is to examine the importance of different aspects of business success for different age and educational groups of female entrepreneurs in the Republic of Serbia. An empirical ...study was conducted on a sample of 40 female entrepreneurs from several urban areas in the Republic of Serbia. The data are analysed by conducting the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and one-way Multivariate Analysis of Variances (MANOVA). Results show that all different aspects of business success that were examined can be grouped around two main dimensions - qualitative and quantitative one. Although certain differences in the importance of these dimensions between female entrepreneurs of different age and education were found, they were not statistically important. However, this research can be seen as a pilot study, so further research, which would possibly presuppose a realization of a larger sample, can be carried out starting from the defined conceptual and methodological framework.
The entrepreneurial self-efficacy is generally considered to be an important de-terminant of the entrepreneurship as a career choice. Another stream of the research on entrepreneurial self-efficacy ...is focused on exploring the link between this construct and the entrepreneurs’ business performance. Present study tries to fill the gap within this research field in the Serbian context by examining the relations of the entrepre-neurial self-efficacy of entrepreneurs operating in the Republic of Serbia to their busi-ness performance. The study explores the nature of the relationship between the en-trepreneurs’ business success and their general entrepreneurial self-efficacy (captured by one holistic measure), but also between business success and different dimensions of the entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Results show that general entrepreneurial self-efficacy and different dimensions of this construct are positively correlated to busi-ness success both measured by net profit and by a composite indicator of business success. The exception is the entrepreneurial self-efficacy in finance which is nega-tively correlated to the composite index of business success. Nevertheless, in the ma-jority of cases, the results show the existence of the hypothesized directions of the re-lationship.
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.
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.
As a strategic commitment of manufacturers to enrich their offer by including services, servitization is becoming an increasingly important phenomenon both in practice and in the research community. ...Considering that this is a young research field spanning different research communities, the aim of this paper is to systematise the existing research results and knowledge and, thus, to offer a unique conceptual framework to cover the phenomenon of servitization. The paper is of a theoretical nature and its main audience are researchers for whom the offered framework should facilitate the identification of research questions and the positioning of their own research within this complex, multidisciplinary phenomenon.
The aim of this paper is to show possible effects of networking strategies and to examine the realization of these effects in the case of clustering of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The ...Nišava District Textile Cluster has been chosen in order to test the impact of clustering on the performance of SMEs. The dynamics of cluster members' growth and development indicators during the four-year period shows that some improvements have been achieved. Nevertheless, further statistical analysis does not confirm the existence of positive effects of this cluster on its members' business performance, that is, their growth and development. The cluster's short lifespan, effects of the world economic crisis and, the most important, the inadequate structure and support of the examined cluster are seen as the main reasons for this absence of positive effects.
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