A Gender Perspective on Entrepreneurial Leadership: Female Leaders in Kazakhstan

• Date: 01 June 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12125
• Published date: 01 June 2018

A Gender Perspective on Entrepreneurial

Leadership: Female Leaders in Kazakhstan

NADA K. KAKABADSE,

1

AHU TATLI,

2

KATERINA NICOLOPOULOU,

3

ALIYA TANKIBAYEVA

4

and NIKOLAI MOURAVIEV

5

1

Henley Business School, University of Reading, Henley-on-Thames, UK

2

School of Business and Management, Queen Mary, University of London, London,UK

3

Strathclyde Business School, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

4

Department of Public Administration, KIMEPUniversity, Almaty, Kazakhstan

5

Dundee Business School, Abertay University, Dundee, UK

The paperproposes a conceptualmodel to understandfemale entrepreneurial leadership through an exploration of

the perceptions and experiences of women entrepreneurs within their leadership roles. The paper addresses an

existing knowledge gap on entrepreneurial leadershipby bringing together threekey constructs of gender, leadership

and entrepreneurship. We apply Stewart’s model of role demands-constraints-choices (DCC) to women entrepreneurs

in Kazakhstan in order to understand their perceptions of the demands, constraints and choices they experience

within their leadership roles. The results of in-depth interviews with women entrepreneurs present deeper

conceptualization of their leadership enactment as a co-developing, co-constructed relational activity between

leaders and others in their wider business environments and context.

Keywords: entrepreneurial leadership; gender; Kazakhstan; women entrepreneurs

Introduction

This paper explores how women leaders perceive and

experience leadership demands, constraints and choices

within entrepreneurial settings in the context of

Kazakhstan. Although there is a widespread recognition

of the importance of researching women in

entrepreneurship, the nature of women’s entrepreneurial

effectiveness and leadership co ntinues to be insufficiently

researched (James 2012). Furthermore, exploring the

nexus of gender, leadership and entrepreneurship requires

attention to the contexts within which women

entrepreneurial leaders operate. We agree with Tlaiss

(2013), that a conceptual framework that recognizes the

role played by the interaction between macro factors

(national, cultural and societal characteristics and norms),

meso factors (organizational, institutional) and micro

factors (individual characteristics) is necessary to support

a situated analysis which adopts a partially emic approach

(see Tatli and Ozbilgin, 2012, for a discussion of the

context specificity of the explanatory power of concepts

and data). Tlaiss (2013) talks of ‘gendered societies’as

significant boundary-setting contexts for the development

of entrepreneurship. Various studies conducted in the

context of devel oping countries/t ransition economi es

(e.g., India: Datta and Gailey, 2012; Pakistan: Shabbir

and Di Gregorio, 1996; Lebanon: Jamali,2009; S. Africa:

Scott et al., 2012; Jordan: Al Dajani and Marlow, 2010;

UAE: Tlaiss, 2013; Ghana: Dzisi, 2008; Lithuania and

Ukraine: Aidis et al., 2007; Russia: Izyumov and

Razumnova, 2000) concur that there are marked

differences between the experiences of men and women

entrepreneurs because of the differential availability of

opportunities and contextual challenges (see also Foss,

2010 and Ahl, 2006 on entrepreneurship and gender).

Aidis et al. (2007), for example, highlight that, overall, in

countriescovered by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor

(GEM) reports, men have twice as many chances of

becoming entrepreneurs than women, but women have

more chances of pursuing ‘social and economicmissions’

(Jennings and Brush, 2013). Potential context-bound/

macro-level constraints in developing countries/transition

economies also include institutional voids, unfavourable

legalframeworks andembedded norms (suchas patriarchy,

Correspondence: Nikolai Mouraviev, Dundee Business School, Abertay

University, 40 Bell St, Dundee, DD1 1HG, United Kingdom, Tel: +44

(0)1382 308 362.E-mail n.mouraviev@abertay.ac.uk

European Management Review, Vol. 15, 155–170, (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12125

©2017 European Academy of Management

religion and male dependency) (Mair and Lanuza, 2005;

Jamali, 2009; Tlaiss, 2013), whilst several related

challengesare often counteracted in practice by individual

characteristics (e.g., passion, determination, self-

confidence, perseverance, ambition) that women

entrepreneurs exhibit in order to survive and thrive

(Jamali, 2009). To date, we are still lacking

substantive in-depth evidence on entrepreneurial

women in developing countries/transition economies,

who manifest an elite disposition, and are driven by

innovation and opportunity (Nicolopoulou et al.,

2016), as the main focus of the literature is on female

entrepreneurship that is community-based or

conducted through disadvantaged groups. Although,

the literature has identified a number of commonalities

between women entrepreneurs e.g. risk aversion,

inability to access substantive finances; lack of

motivation, education, desire to start a business,

capacity to access support for decision-making and to

employ networks effectively –see Ahl (2006). In this

context, research on female entrepreneurship in

developing countries/transition economies could offer

important insights into this body of literature by

emphasizing the ‘context’as an important dimension

of analysis.

The literature often defines an ent repreneur as actively

engaging one’s own vision, skills and abilities with the

context whereby he or she exercises opportunities for

value creation (Bjerke and Rämö, 2011). However, the

literature lacks agreement regarding the ways in which

women enactsuch engagement and how such engagement

materializes (Kobia and Sikalieh, 2010). This article

aligns with those perspectives that place entrepreneurial

leadershipwithin a more broadly defined processof social

construction, which acknowledges the importance of

context-based interactions (Hughes et al., 2012).

Furthermore, this study is set against a backdrop of

debate about distinctive properties that women bring to

leadership in organizations (Eagly and Carli, 2007). A

relatively large proportion of the literature highlights the

importance of entrepreneurs’cognitions as determinants

of entrepreneurial actions and leadership (Baron, 1998;

Pech and Cameron, 2006). In keeping with this line of

thinking, many studies emphasize that entrepreneurs have

a set of cognitions in relation to growth and development

different from ‘non-entrepreneurs’(Pech and Cameron,

2006). However, what remain underexplored are the

perceptions and experiences of leadership, which inform

the conceptualization of entrepreneurial leadership

(Bjerke and Rämö, 2011). Jensen and Luthans (2006)

referred to this as a gap in knowledge of both leadership

and entrepreneurship. The present study aims to bridge

this gap by exploring the leadership roles’demands,

constraints and choices as perceived and experienced by

women who lead entrepreneurial organizations. As such

our research adopts a reflexive and practical focus on the

lived experienc e, as ‘experienceis what explains our grasp

of the concepts of objects’and reality (Campbell, 2002:

137). For example, leadership experience facilitates the

individual’s internalization of the leadership image and

leader’s role, which in turn impacts her/his motivation to

continue in the leadership role in the future as well as

reinforcing the self-efficacy in leading (Erikson, 1959;

Bandura, 1986; Kotter, 1988). Thus, our focus in this

paper is on the experiencesand perceptions of leadership,

and our research question is: How do women

entrepreneurs perceive and experience leadership roles in

the context of Kazakhstan?

The article begins with a review of the extant

literature on female entrepreneurial leadership. This is

followed by a discussion of Stewart’s (1982)

demands-constraints-choices (DCC) model. The article

then elucidates the entrepreneurial context in

Kazakhstan and subsequently delineates the study’s

methodology. After that the findings drawn from the

interview data are presented using the DCC framework.

The final section offers a discussion of the findings and

key conclusions.

Female entrepreneurial leadership

framework

In this article, entrepreneurship is conceptualized as ‘a

context-dependent social process through which

individuals and teams create wealth by bringing together

unique packages of resources to exploit marketplace

opportunities’(Ireland et al., 2001: 51). Schumpeter

(1934) definedthe role of an entrepreneur as anotherform

of individual leadership, whilst entrepreneurial leadership

is conceptualized as a distinctive style of leadership that

can be present in an organization of any size, type, level

of maturity, industry or culture (Renko et al., 2015).

Entrepreneurial leadership entails ‘influencing and

directing the performance of group members towards the

achievement of organisational goals that involve

recognizing and exploring entrepreneurial opportunities’

(Renko et al., 2015: 55). The distinguishing features of

an entrepreneurial leadership style are their unique

perceptionand action, namely thefocus on entrepreneurial

goals (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000), recognition of

opportunity, the possibility toinnovate rather than imitate

in the production and delivery of goods or services

(Gaglio, 2004)and the ability to exploit new opportunities

in terms of activities and investments to increase returns

(Choi and Shepherd, 2004). Entrepreneurial leadership

also incorporates gender because perception and actions,

which are key constructs for understanding

entrepreneurial leadership, are often gender biased

(Kennedy et al., 2003; Hargittai and Shafer, 2006).

156 N.K. Kakabadse et al.

©2017 European Academy of Management