Moving Right Along: Examining The Venture Gestation Process For Black Women Entrepreneurs

Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Business Administration

Committee Chair

Joe Hair, Ph.D.

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is becoming one of the most sault after professions due to factors such as locus of control, flexibility, need for achievement, autonomy, and escaping corporate America. Many have come to realize that some of the most common reasons for pursuing entrepreneurship are not as convenient as expected. In fact, some of the inequalities experienced in corporate America are also experienced during venture creation. This is more so apparent for marginalized groups such as people of color, people with disabilities, and women. This study explores the barriers faced by African American women during the venture creation process and some of the contributing factors that play a role in successful creation of new ventures. This study will explore two of the more popular avenues to gaining access to experience social capital and human capital, what the experience of Black women entrepreneurs have been in terms of gain access to those forms of capital, as well as how this particular group of entrepreneurs are creating ventures inspire of the challenges. The results revealed that there was a statistically significant negative relationship between gendered racial microaggressions and individual factors among black women xii entrepreneurs. The results expand the findings of Lewis and Neville (2015), A. M. Jones (2020), Sue (2010), Capodilupo et al. (2010), and other researchers in the literature who concluded with the negative impact microaggressions have on Black women to include the also negative impact on Black women entrepreneurs during the venture creation process. The results also reveal that although the moderating effect of superwoman schema on the relationship between individual factors and venture gestation activity was not significant, the findings show a pattern of moderation. However, a recent study concluded that the superwoman schema can negatively impact both the mental and physical health of Black women (Woods-Giscombé et al., 2019). The findings from this research is two-fold, entrepreneurs can utilize the study to create a playbook for eliminating risk associated with their encounters with microaggressions while presenting researchers with preliminary data around microaggressions in the field of entrepreneurship. Future research should explore other control variables to determine whether moderating effects exist between the individual factors and the levels of superwoman schema.

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