Entrepreneurial motivations among female university youth in Saudi Arabia

Wafa N. Almobaireek and Tatiana S. Manolova

Journal of Business Economics and Management, 2013, vol. 14, issue sup1, S56-S75

Abstract: To successfully target potential women entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia, a better understanding of their entrepreneurial motivations is needed. In this study, we used economic, human development, and social learning perspectives to explore the entrepreneurial motivations among female university youth in Saudi Arabia and formulated three hypotheses on the gender differences in these motivations. We conducted a survey among undergraduate students at King Saud University in Spring'2010 (n = 856) and tested our hypotheses using analysis of variance (chi-square tests and t-tests). Consistent with research on female entrepreneurs around the world, our results indicate that female university youth in Saudi Arabia are more likely than men to start an entrepreneurial venture out of necessity, whereas men are more likely to have a financial success motivation. At the same time, and in contrast to findings from studies on entrepreneurial motivations in the context of Western Europe and the USA, young Saudi university women report a narrower range of entrepreneurial motivations, compared to men. The implications of this exploratory study point to the need for initiatives specifically focused at young women in order to increase their confidence that entrepreneurship is a viable route to accomplish a broad range of career reasons.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.3846/16111699.2012.711364 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jbemgt:v:14:y:2013:i:sup1:p:s56-s75

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/TBEM20

DOI: 10.3846/16111699.2012.711364

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Economics and Management is currently edited by Izolda Joksiene, Romualdas Ginevicius and Ieva Meidute

More articles in Journal of Business Economics and Management from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().