Gray Cavender’s research while affiliated with Arizona State University and other places

Our research reveals how family and business pivot opportunities and decisions are intertwined and shaped by respondent social positionality in two country contexts—the USA and Czechia. Our findings underline the need for intersectional, contextual, and comparative analyses as they relate to positionality and entrepreneurship generally as well as to specific women SEBOs’ Covid-19 survival strategies. We offer policy insights for supporting women as diverse SEBOs, with a specific focus on crises influencing both the economy and families, and on post-crisis recovery. The long closures during Covid-19 made visible the problematic care infrastructure in the USA and Czechia, and highlighted how women’s acceptance of increased care demands challenged their business ownership. State business assistance programmes were not sensitive to the gendered needs of SEBOs in either country. They were slow, and eligibility was unclear, especially for immigrants.

We interviewed separately partners in twelve CR copreneurial couples to understand their possibly divergent perspectives on motives for copreneurship. Blenkinsopp and Owens argue that family businesses are a uniquely hybrid organizations that blend economic and caring concerns. Our analysis is guided by a structured-agency approach that focuses on how societal norms, the economy, and government policies influence entrepreneurial decisions. Our findings reveal how women’s caring concerns can converge with traditional entrepreneurial motives and the country context to encourage business ownership. The men in our study rarely discussed concerns about parenting duties, and their contextual concerns differed from those of the women. These findings are significant as they facilitate an understanding of how the entrepreneurial agency converges with social structures in a transitional country, such as the CR.

Utilising a comparative/doing gender approach and thematic narrative methodology, we examine how copreneurs – romantic business partners – construct business and caring responsibilities. We interviewed male-female partners separately from 12 couples in the Czech Republic (CR) and 13 in the United States (US), countries with diverse entrepreneurial histories, norms and family policies. We ask: (1) How do copreneurs construct/‘do’ business and family? (2) How do copreneurs credit contributions of partners? (3) How are constructions of business, caring and credit embedded in country contexts? Results show that business tasks did not align with strict gender stereotypes. Task characterisations of CR respondents shifted according to doer’s sex category. CR men claimed business leadership; US men gave women equal credit. In both countries, domestic responsibilities were attributed to women. Women’s narratives addressed blending business and care; men’s narratives concentrated on business. We document how these gendering practices referenced country employment opportunities, gender norms and family-leave policies.

Women entrepreneurs are not a homogenous group, intersectional approaches are essential to grasp how multiple dimensions of entrepreneurs’ social identities converge to frame opportunities. Our study focuses on the experiences and ambitions of small, purposively-selected samples of women business owners from two countries – the United States (US) and Czech Republic (CR). A combined contextual embeddedness/intersectional approach to entrepreneurship suggests that interwoven dimensions of identities position entrepreneurs differentially in relation to the structural context in which they are located, including variations in historical patterns, national policies, market conditions, and normative regimes. We illustrate how hierarchical structures shape life chances and business practices and demonstrate that a gender-aware approach alone is insufficient for understanding women’s entrepreneurship.

Degenerative or socially toxic work environments have returned to public and scholarly attention since the great recession of 2008. Business scholars and management experts have increasingly called for new strategies to build more sustainable work systems that better promote employee well-being as well as long-run productivity. Our research examines interview narratives by the owner-operators of 60 small businesses identified as innovative enterprises in their community. Respondents identified the building of a positive work environment for their employees as a key condition necessary for innovation. Although this was an unanticipated finding in our study of business innovation, an examination of the emerging literature on workplace toxicity and sustainable human relations management revealed significant consistency between our respondent-identified strategies and recommendations for building a regenerative work environment. These findings suggest that small innovative businesses may offer a fertile arena for the development of sustainable work systems.

Bankruptcies at Enron and other corporations led to revelations of widespread wrongdoing: the Corporate Scandals of 2002. Congressional hearings into the scandals culminated in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002). There was extensive media coverage of these events. Using insights from Emerson and Messinger's (197713. Emerson , Robert and S. Sheldon Messinger . 1977 . “The Micro-Politics of Trouble.” Social Problems 25 : 121 – 134 . [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®], [CSA]View all references) Micro-Politics of Trouble perspective, we consider how three newspapers covered the scandals. We focus on how these scandals were defined, explained, and the remedies that were proposed for them. We consider what the Micro-Politics of Trouble perspective offers for an understanding of these scandals, corporate crime and deviance generally, and the media's role in reporting these issues.