Based on extensive fieldwork, this book demonstrates how gender is an organizing principle of entrepreneurial ecosystems and makes a difference in how ecosystem resources are assembled and how they can be accessed. By bringing visibility to how ecosystem actors are heterogeneous across identities, interactions and experiences, the book highlights the role and complexity of individual, organizational, and institutional factors working in concert to create and maintain gendered inequities. Entrepreneurial Ecosystems provides research-driven insights around effective organizational practices and policies aimed at remedying gendered and intersectional inequalities associated with entrepreneurship activities and economic growth. Proposing a typology of four ecosystem identities, it highlights how some might be more amenable and organized towards gender inclusion and change, while others may be much more difficult to change, reorganize and restructure. It offers scholars, students, practitioners and policymakers insights about gender in relation to analyzing entrepreneurial ecosystems and for fostering inclusive economic development policies.

A first in utilising transnational migration studies as a new theoretical framework in management and organization studies, this book presents a much-needed new concept for understanding people, work and organizations in a world on the move while attending to growing inequality associated with work in changing societies.

Entrepreneurship support organizations, such as accelerators, incubators, co-working spaces, and networking groups play a vital role by providing information, mentorship, networking opportunities, and other valuable resources for entrepreneurs throughout the venture creation and growth process. Within this context, we have observed emerging practices to include a diverse set of entrepreneurs (e.g. women and minorities) by support organizations in St. Louis, and at the same time, identified more demands from entrepreneurs for this purpose. Based on more than 80 interviews and observations, we provide voice to entrepreneurs who utilize these resources and discuss how support organizations can more effectively respond to these demands, expand their scope and reach, and bolster their own role in strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

International entrepreneurs operating in the context of globalization provide an opportunity for scholars to study and better understand the entrepreneurial process under dynamic conditions. Borrowing from Bhabha's postcolonial lens, we offer hybrid identities as a new way to conceptualize entrepreneurial selves under conditions of globalization as hitherto, the approaches to the study of international entrepreneurs have relied on static concepts of self and culture emanating from Western philosophical traditions. We believe our framework can be used to understand the novel ways international entrepreneurs understand themselves and others, conduct their businesses, and make sense of the "rules of the game" in the ever changing socio-cultural and institutional contexts in which they are situated. Qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with international entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and Turkey illuminate this phenomena and the usefulness of the hybrid identity concept, specifically, and postcolonial theoretical framework, more broadly, to research in international business and entrepreneurship.

Women-owned businesses have an economic impact of nearly $3 trillion in the U.S. Despite the tremendous opportunity for economic growth they present, women entrepreneurs lag behind their male counterparts in terms of number of start-ups and scaling of businesses. To understand how and why this may be taking shape, we focus on the role of entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) or those organizations that act as intermediaries between the resources of a local ecosystem and entrepreneurs. All organizations that have as their proverbial mission to serve, support or partner with entrepreneurs can be categorized as ESOs. Given their role as decision makers, gatekeepers and resource providers, such organizations have the power and capacity to determine who is granted the opportunity to access and benefit from the very networks, mentors, programs and funding that increase entrepreneurs' odds for success. Through extensive interviews and observations over the course of 2013 to 2016, we compare and contrast the entrepreneurship ecosystems in St. Louis, MO and Boston, MA to understand differences in gender inclusion efforts at ESOs. We focus specifically on cultural cognitive frames, social normative 'rules', and regulatory forces as exerting institutional pressures on ESOs in the specific communities in which they are embedded. Our qualitative approach yields in-depth insights as to the mechanisms and dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in the St. Louis and Boston ecosystems by way of ESOs and their practices. Findings indicate that ESOs in the emerging St. Louis ecosystem engage in inclusion efforts through institutional pressures exerted at the grassroots level by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. These efforts seem to have yielded positive results in that women's business ownership has increased by 16% in a span of five years between 2007 and 2012, going from 28% to 44%. In comparison, women's business ownership has stayed around 30%, in Boston between 2007 and 2012, which is a much more established ecosystem. Our findings indicate that inclusion efforts driven mainly by top-down regulatory forces may not be as effective in changing the gender gap in entrepreneurship ecosystems. We expand on these differences and outline steps for ESOs and policy makers to build inclusive ecosystems in their cities.

Purpose - This paper aims to highlight secular and Islamic feminist approaches to entrepreneurship as potential means to challenge gender inequality in the Turkish context. In Turkey, gender equality remains elusive in a nation where secular and Islamic ideologies compete and produce different solutions to ongoing economic, socio-cultural and political issues. Women's entrepreneurship has emerged as an important solution toward gender equality and economic development. Design/methodology/approach - Using two women's organizations that exemplify secular and Islamic feminist ideologies, the author examines whether the entrepreneurship activities they promote give way to challenging patriarchal norms, values and practices widespread in Turkish society.Findings - Through their distinct practices and engagement with entrepreneurship, both secular and Islamic feminist positions allow for praxis and represent an ethico-political commitment to dismantling neo-liberal development ideologies in the Turkish context that perpetuate gender inequality.Social implications - Secular and Islamic feminist practices and entrepreneurship practices have different implications for achieving gender equality including changes in gender norms, economic development policies and women's empowerment in a Muslim-majority country. In addition, it raises questions around the popular notion of “entrepreneurship as women's empowerment”. Originality/value - This paper is of value to scholars who want to understand secular and Islamic feminisms and their implications for challenging gender inequality. The Turkish context with its traditional and modern societal norms and values provides a rich case study to examine these issues through the exemplars of entrepreneurship. It is also of value to scholars who want to understand structural constraints associated with gender equality beyond individual-level challenges.

In this paper, I discuss challenges critical scholars face with respect to publishing qualitative research in 'top tier' mainstream journal outlets. Relying on ideas and insights from postcolonial and feminist thinking, I discuss how these theoretical positions inform reading, writing, and reflexivity in the production of critical management scholarship. To this end, I use examples from reviewers' comments on work I've submitted to the Academy of Management Journal as well as conferences to demonstrate specifically the problematic assumptions that guide qualitative research expectations particularly in 'top tier' management outlets. Adopting a reflexive stance that recognizes the limits of individual agency, I suggest that engaging in interdisciplinarity across social science disciplines may promote critical and socially engaged scholarship as legitimate business knowledge.