Are female entrepreneurs ambidextrous leaders? A qualitative study through the lens of social role theory
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine how female leaders demonstrate ambidextrous leadership behaviors amid perceived role incongruity. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted an exploratory, qualitative approach. Data is collected via interviews with 14 female business owners and analyzed thematically. Findings As entrepreneurs, the female leaders draw on both communal and agentic traits; they also demonstrate both opening and closing leadership behaviors and can switch between leadership behaviors and traits as may be required by the situation. Experiences of gender-specific challenges were less visible for this group, and the female leaders consider all actions taken to ensure business venture success as superseding role expectations of any kind. Research limitations/implications The research design may limit the extent to which the findings can be generalized. Practical implications The study provides insights on issues such as gender equality (SDG 5), reduced inequalities (SDG 10) and uncovers ways to support female leaders or encourage young girls to embrace leadership opportunities and business ownership. Current and future female leaders may also find this study useful to boost self-efficacy and navigate gender-specific leadership challenges. Originality/value This study shows that female entrepreneurs are ambidextrous leaders and gender-related challenges are less visible for female entrepreneurs/business owners. It highlights that consideration for business success is more important to female entrepreneurs than concerns about role incongruity. Also, the study shows that female entrepreneurs need to balance communal traits and agentic traits as well as opening and closing leadership behaviors to successfully lead their business ventures.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".