Research On Phase Characteristics Of Female Entrepreneurial Competence And Its Relations With Growth Performance

Female socialization in China has been "successful." in that requirements and expectations of male-oriented society has been imposed on women in terms of their identity, roles, status and function both in society and family, either explicitly or implicitly. Women as a group, in turn have also acknowledged these expectations, which has become their ultimate goals as well as the standard and benchmark of self-cognition and self-development. The expectation and role requirement of society on both female and male group is called gender stereotype, which immensely contributes to men’s perpetual domination in the entrepreneurship field. The profile of an entrepreneur, which is decisive, competitive, confident and experienced, are usually regarded as symbols of men, while the image of women is unreliable, dependent, unconfident, prudent, and lack of keenness in business, which is far removed from an entrepreneur’s image. However women have begun to show their disobedience to men in this field since last60s and70s. The remarkable performance of female entrepreneur has completely thrown away the bias that "in the men dominated entrepreneurship field ’women are inferior to men"Female entrepreneurship research has not been sufficient. Firstly, the amount of the research is not sufficient; secondly, qualitative research based on demographic characteristics tremendously outnumbers quantitative research; thirdly, nearly all studies are cross sectional with a huge shortage of longitudinal ones; fourthly, research on female entrepreneur’s growth is not sufficient; fifthly, lack of research on the underlying reasons of gender differences; Finally, female competence is still a virgin ground. Therefore, research on female entrepreneurial competence has its theoretical significance.Based on the above-mentioned background, the present study focuses on woman entrepreneurial competence and its relations with growth performance based on stage. In other words, what difficulties and barriers women will encounter in the entrepreneurship process, and what entrepreneurial competence they need to accomplish their entrepreneurial tasks apart from generic and universal entrepreneurial competence; also, how female entrepreneurial competence influences entrepreneurial growth performance. These tasks are achieved by the following sub-researches.Sub-research1:explore research methods and focus on research questions. The present paper identifies three tasks; first, to develop the structural elements of female entrepreneurial abilities; second, to construct models of female phase entrepreneurial ability; third, to explore function mechanism of female entrepreneurial abilities. During the research, we found problems in the previous research hypothesis, research methods and research design. Therefore, we made revision and methodology exploring until we come to the most appropriate methodology and the key problem.Sub-research2:develop interview outline on the basis of literature review and sub-researches1. The participants of the study were22female and10male entrepreneurs. Grounded theory approach was adopted to encode. The result shows that the reason that women are rejected by the entrepreneurial field is not because of the system, but rather the stereotype and social role deep-rooted in social cultural tradition and psychology. At the same time, women have accepted this "division" of social role and the position of gender role in the process of socialization, due to the fact that entrepreneurship is not included in their career planning or is placed at the bottom on the list. Compared to male entrepreneurs, women would encounter more serious and larger numbers of difficulties and obstacles. Those who successfully start their business or who strive to success in the entrepreneurial field match positively in both entrepreneurial task and their entrepreneurial competence.Sub-research3:Through case studies, the present research explores dynamic matching mechanism in female entrepreneurial development, which includes the matching mechanism process between tasks and personality, tasks and learning, tasks and encouragement. The study depicts a female entrepreneurial development path based on different phases.Sub-research4:On the basis of related literature and previous sub-research, we developed questionnaires to survey phase female entrepreneurial competence and its relations with growth performance. We tested and verified the conception of female entrepreneurial task-competence-fit based on different phases by using statistical software and method.Sub-research5:using structure equation modeling, we constructing and validating the function mechanism mode of female entrepreneurial competencies and entrepreneurial growth performance. We made some further progress in theory, including the new finding of the research method and gender difference of entrepreneurial ability; the new exploration of deep-rooted reasons of gender difference in entrepreneurial ability; the development of the characteristics of phase female entrepreneurial competence; the function mode of female entrepreneurial competence based on stages. Conclusions of the present study have important significance in providing powerful theoretical support for improving women’s entrepreneurial intention, stimulating female entrepreneurial motivation, enhancing female entrepreneurial competence and supporting female Entrepreneurship.