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Female Entrepreneurship as Production Factor or Business Function: A Literature Review of (Lack of) Definitions

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Gender Issues in Business and Economics

Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics ((SPBE))

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Abstract

The research starts from an analysis of scientific papers identified by means of querying academic databases, in relation to the identification and classification of female entrepreneurship. Since female entrepreneurship is an economic magnitude clearly identified only in a small part of the scientific products analyzed, the paper continues with the purpose of locating a definition of entrepreneurship as productive factor or entrepreneurial function. The lack of a unique definition seems to constitute a fundamental element of this field of studies, even though the results of the four queries carried out suggest that entrepreneurship, in addition to the female entrepreneurship, is mainly considered a function that combines the production factors, rather than a productive factor. Implications for profit accounting rules are discussed at the end of the paper.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We considered the criterion of a clear definition when the paper, possibly of a qualitative nature, reported a definition of the independence of this magnitude with respect to the others. As it can be seen in Table 3.2, female entrepreneurship is classified as independent in 41 papers of the 142 result of the query.

  2. 2.

    53.68% of the 95 papers obtained as output of the two queries; 96% of the classifiable papers. 44.21% of the papers couldn’t be classified in relation to the definition of “entrepreneurship” as a production or business function.

  3. 3.

    16.88% of the 77 scientific articles obtained as output of the two-key query “entrepreneurship” and “production factor”; 38.24% of the classifiable papers.

  4. 4.

    55.84% of the papers couldn’t be classified in relation to the definition of “entrepreneurship” as production factor.

  5. 5.

    Adding as a second keyword “factors,” the number of results drops to 32. Adding as a second keyword “production factors,” the number of results drops to 1.

  6. 6.

    Only 27 of the quantitative papers that indicate female entrepreneurship as independent (93.10% = 27/29) indicate that it is a business function.

  7. 7.

    Only one paper clearly indicates the presence of productive factors to be coordinated.

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Correspondence to Gabriele Serafini .

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Serafini, G. (2018). Female Entrepreneurship as Production Factor or Business Function: A Literature Review of (Lack of) Definitions. In: Paoloni, P., Lombardi, R. (eds) Gender Issues in Business and Economics. Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65193-4_3

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