The Behavioral Characteristics Of Women Entrepreneurial Leadership And Its Influencing Mechanism:a Multi-level Analysis

In recent years, women entrepreneurship has become increasingly active throughout the world, and women entrepreneurial leadership became the new focus of entrepreneurship and leadership research. At present, global economic structural transformation and upgrading are putting forward new challenges and opportunities for women entrepreneurs to lead organizational change and innovation. Under the increasingly dynamic, complex and inclusive external environment, it is important to study how women entrepreneurial leaders reconstruct gender-role identities, demonstrate new women entrepreneurial leadership behavior, mobilize employees and organization to continuously change and innovation, obtain competitive advantage, and realizes the staff growth and sustainable development of the organization.Drawing upon previous research on female entrepreneurship, female leadership and entrepreneurial leadership, this paper discussed how women entrepreneurial leadership emerge and exert influence based on action focus theory and multilevel analysis framework. Three theoretical issues were identified. First, what are the key characteristics of women entrepreneurial leadership within the context of transformation and upgrading in China? And what is the construct of women entrepreneurial leadership and its unique characteristics? Second, how does women entrepreneurial leadership emerge by focusing on environmental change, entrepreneurial task and self concept? Finally, how women entrepreneurial leadership affects organizational performance and employee performance in a multilevel form?Study1focused on the conceptualization of women entrepreneurial leadership (WEL) under change context in China and the development of WEL scale. Using grounded theory, we developed a multi-dimensional construct of WEL. Then, we formulated WEL scale by expert group discussion, and (246women entrepreneurs) tested its structure of WEL with EFA and (302women entrepreneurs) verified a second-order six dimensional construct of WEL by CFA. and the convergent validity and discriminant validity were tested with composite reliability and AVE method. In conclusion, WEL had six factors, consisting of changing mindset, cultivating innovation, controlling risk, integration guanxi. affinity inspiring, and instructive caring. Women entrepreneurial leadership had new leadership behavior mix, and showed unique gender characteristics, such as affinity inspiring, and instructive caring.Study2used action focus theory to explore the antecedents of women entrepreneurial leadership. We relied on embedded, multiple cases across four different industries to investigate women entrepreneurs’transformation and upgrading actions. Results showed that dynamics and complexity of change environment would promote behavior of changing mindset, cultivating innovation, controlling risk, integration guanxi. Environmental munificence would promote behavior of guanxi integration. Business innovation, network interaction, and environmental-protection operation would also promote behavior of changing mindset, cultivating innovation, controlling risk, integration guanxi. We called it "multi-contextual driven effect" Women entrepreneurs’masculine self concepts of "entrepreneur" and "leader" would lead to behavior of changing mindset, cultivating innovation, controlling risk, integration guanxi, while their roles as women would lead to behavior of affinity inspiring, and instructive caring. We called it "multi-role identity effect". ANOVA was adopted to test "multi-contextual effect" and "self identity effect" using two independent samples.Study3tested the effects of women entrepreneurial leadership (WEL) using multi-level modeling. Data were collected from152women-owned enterprises by multi-phase, multi-source method. Results showed that WEL was positively related to organizational performance (e.g., entrepreneurial financial performance, organizational innovation performance, and social responsibility performance). Social entrepreneurial orientation and management team’s commitment to change mediated the relationship between WEL and entrepreneurial organizational performance. In addition, WEL promoted social entrepreneurial orientation through management team’s commitment to change. On the other hand, WEL was positively related to employees’performance (e.g., innovative job performance, job satisfaction, and affective commitment). Furthermore, WEL positively influenced employees’ performance through Leader-member exchange (LMX) and employees’personal initiatives. In addition, WEL motivated employees’personal initiatives through LMX.Finally, the main research findings of this study were systematically summarized. Furthermore, the theoretical advances and managerial implications for women entrepreneurship within the context of transformation and upgrading in China, as well as limitations and future research were discussed.