The art of dramatic construction: Enhancing the context dimension in women’s entrepreneurship research

• Published in: Journal of business research 2023-01, Vol.155 (Part B), p.113440, Article 113440
• Main Authors: Henry, Colette, Lewis, Kate V.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Context; Defamiliarization; Dramatic construction; Exposition; Gender; Women's entrepreneurship
• ISSN: 0148-2963; 1873-7978; 1873-7978
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113440

[Display omitted] •The primary context variable used by women’s entrepreneurship scholars is ‘country’•Scholars tend to conceptualize context as ‘problems’ facing women entrepreneurs.•Context influences women entrepreneurs differently to men.•Scholars should focus on the women entrepreneur as the unit of analysis.•Arts-based techniques such as defamiliarization and protagonist-privileging enhance how scholars ‘do’ context. Scholarship has evidenced that context is more complicated within women’s entrepreneurship because it is gendered. Failure to engage appropriately with context can lead to overly simplistic interpretations of research findings. Accordingly, in this study we explore how studies on women’s entrepreneurship engage with context and demonstrate how context engagement can be enhanced by applying arts-based literary techniques such as defamiliarization, exposition, highlighting sub-texts and privileging the protagonist. Our findings show that context is still significantly under treated in women’s entrepreneurship research. We make three important contributions: we enhance understanding of context, synthesize current methodological approaches to context analysis, and signpost scholars toward some effective techniques for enhancing their engagement with context. In so doing, the paper answers previous calls for more theoretical development within the field.