Passion

Women as Entrepreneurial Leaders

Leitch and Volery argue that "entrepreneurs are leaders par excellence who identify opportunities and marshal resources from various stakeholders in order to exploit these opportunities and create value". Numerous scholars view the entrepreneur as a leader. They argue that entrepreneurs are leaders owing to their position and are encouraged to take this role because the venture requires them to do so. In the same vein, leadership is seen to be a key component of the entrepreneurial process considering that entrepreneurs cannot take advantage of opportunities without enabling individual and collective efforts. Entrepreneurs must demonstrate leadership for their venture to take form. Leitch, et al. argue that "entrepreneurial leadership is the leadership role performed in entrepreneurial ventures, rather than in the more general sense of an entrepreneurial style of leadership".

Women play a significant role in the broader entrepreneurial phenomenon and economic development. This is particularly true in rural and regional economies as women entrepreneurs in these contexts have a significant impact on local rural and regional economies, both in terms of income and employment. Women entrepreneurs also have a crucial role to play in developing sustainable businesses. However, there remain deeply seated biases in how women as entrepreneurs and women as leaders are viewed. Women entrepreneurs continue to experience challenges in developing their leadership roles, which compromise their efficiency and often prevent them from becoming capable leaders.

Women entrepreneurial leaders face challenges in the management of relationships with others whom they lead within and outside of their enterprises. The development and management of suitable social and human capital can assist them in developing their relationships with all stakeholders. Lack of such capital has a significant moderating effect on motivations for women to be entrepreneurial leaders. Compared to their male counterparts, women are less likely to pursue an entrepreneurial career because they often believe they lack the necessary entrepreneurial skills and knowledge and are not well-versed in entrepreneurial roles. Wiesner confirmed these self-limiting beliefs Australian RRR women entrepreneurs espouse.

Exploring the unique disposition of RRR women entrepreneurs is therefore essential to understand how women entrepreneurs perceive different aspects of entrepreneurship and venture growth to overcome gender challenges and advance their entrepreneurial leadership careers.

Entrepreneurial Leader Identity

Scholars emphasized the importance of paying more attention to the psychological aspects of entrepreneurship, as well as the ways in which its actualization may be influenced by culture. Furthermore, Uy, et al. and Stephan reported that women entrepreneurs could be impacted by psychological and resilient coping mechanisms. There have been several empirical studies demonstrating that the psychological aspect of entrepreneurs has an impact on the cognitive processes involved in conscious behavioral choices, such as entrepreneurial growth intentions. Additionally, researchers have found strong empirical evidence that psychological factors differentiate the structure of male entrepreneurship compared to women entrepreneurship, both in terms of how they go about starting a business and the goals that they hope to achieve. Sweida and Reichard reported that the differences between women who engage in High Growth Entrepreneurship (HGE) and those who are not engaged in HGE could be explained by differences in their respective attitudes and identities. Furthermore, even though high-growth women entrepreneurs acknowledge that discrimination is a problem and a barrier, they appear to be able to mitigate the effects of gender stereotyping by viewing these barriers as challenges to overcome. They tend to see their businesses as extensions of their positive self-image and sense of identity. Therefore, women entrepreneurship cannot be fully understood without understanding entrepreneurial leader identity, which is related to how leaders themselves perceive leadership and their leadership role. However, there is an absence of research that focuses on the way women entrepreneurs perceive themselves as entrepreneurial leaders and what might be the effect of leadership self-perception on entrepreneurial behavior.

Venture Growth Intention

The concept of entrepreneurial growth intention has been variously defined in previous research, using labels such as growth intention, growth aspiration, and growth motivation. Dutta and Thornhill define entrepreneurial growth intention as "an entrepreneur's goal or aspiration for the growth trajectory she or he would like the venture to follow". Even though Sadler–Smith, et al. found that one of the important characteristics of the behavior of an entrepreneurial leader is the intention to grow the enterprise, this notion has not been examined within the RRR women entrepreneurship context. Therefore, investigating the relationship between RRR women entrepreneurs' entrepreneurial leadership identity (self-perception as an entrepreneurial leader) and their intention to grow their enterprise will enable a better understanding of the phenomenon of business growth in general, and more specifically within the underdeveloped research area of RRR women entrepreneurs.

Owing to the current lack of in-depth exploration on the topic of venture growth intention, we conducted a search for antecedents of growth intention that could combine many of the constructs found in the present literature on venture growth intentions. As a result of our search, "Entrepreneurial Leader Identity" presented itself as a novel antecedent of venture growth intention, a concept related to one's perception of oneself as an entrepreneurial leader, as opposed to entrepreneurial identity. As outlined earlier, an entrepreneurial leader is someone who recognizes and seizes possibilities for their enterprise and selects and mobilizes stakeholders to carry out the vision set to reach the entrepreneurial goal. To establish an Entrepreneurial Leader Identity, it is important to internalize and describe oneself as being both an entrepreneur and a leader and to incorporate this Entrepreneurial Leader Identity into one's existing overall identity.

Identity is a generic term that refers to a person's perception of who he or she is. Despite the fact that the term is used in a variety of ways and from a variety of theoretical perspectives, the common theme is that identity refers to a person's understanding of who he or she is, and that this self-understanding underpins the person's interpretation of events, frames their intentions, and motivation, and guides their actions. Diverse viewpoints on identity, despite differing in their emphasis and assumptions, conceptualize it as consisting of a plethora of motivational notions such as self-perceptions, group memberships, beliefs, values, objectives, emotions, and habitual ways of action. Consequently, it is no coincidence that diverse motivational viewpoints refer to identity as being involved in motivation. The concept of identity may be particularly useful because it may provide a framework capable of conceptually integrating the uniqueness of different individuals' motivation with the shared aspects of motivation among individuals belonging to a particular group, as well as the general principles of motivation that apply to people and contexts in general.

According to identity theory, self-identity is made up of a collection of roles that a person plays, which in turn causes a habitual activity to support the validation of the self-concept. Using this theory, it can be claimed that self-identity seeks to build consistency between attitudes and actions, hence eliciting specific goals. As a result, the more critical an identity is, the more identity-congruent behaviors it evokes. Several research projects, including those that have been adjusted for past behavior, have demonstrated that self-identity is an essential supplementary element within the Theory of Planned Behavior for predicting both intentions and behaviors. The TPB posits that individuals plan their behavior, and such human behavior is preceded by an individual's intentions to engage in a particular behavior. Accordingly, intention is an accurate predictor of planned behavior.

In a meta-analysis, Rise, et al. revealed that self-identity explained a considerable amount of additional variance in intentions after correcting for historical behavior. There is rising evidence to support the inclusion of identity - both personal and social - in the TPB to predict intentions. Theoretically, this advancement marks the incorporation of key concepts from social identity theory and identity theory into the TPB to predict intentions. When a particular social identity serves as the primary basis for self-conception, an individual's behavior becomes group-based and influenced by the norms of that social category or group. The process of categorizing oneself in terms of a specific social identity highlights similarities between the self and other ingroup members and emphasizes disparities between the self and outgroup members. As a result, the behavior and expectations of other group members will serve as a guide for appropriate behavior, mainly when that social identity is fundamental to the self-concept.

Cognitive interpretations of leadership experiences influence the development of a leader's self-identity. If a person's self-image matches his or her impression of a leader, or if he or she can display the competencies of a prototypical leader, he or she is more likely to identify as a leader. The ability to identify as a leader improves when one experiences another leader with whom one can identify. Leadership experiences provide an opportunity to emulate observed leadership behaviors. According to Lord and Hall, leader identity is a type of cognitive schema that serves as a reservoir for information and knowledge associated with a leadership role. It also guides an individual's behavior and interactions in leadership roles and processes. Therefore, it is argued that Entrepreneurial Leader Identity guides the entrepreneurial leader in the entrepreneurial process and behavior, including venture growth process and behavior.

Entrepreneurial Passion

Passion can be defined as a strong inclination towards a self-defining activity that people love, consider significant, and to which they commit time and effort. Passion is an essential part of entrepreneurship; it can play an important role in the entrepreneurial process, from starting a business to its outcome, including business growth and the behavior of entrepreneurs. Moreover, it is associated with positive sentiments and attitudes towards entrepreneurial activities vital to the self-identity of an entrepreneur. Passion strengthens motivation and stimulates individuals to continue through the difficulties associated with accomplishing complex tasks. Passion will therefore have a positive impact on business growth.

Entrepreneurial passion (EP) can be defined as an entrepreneur's intense positive feelings towards a particular entrepreneurial activity or "domain" that they are engaged in, and which relates to their entrepreneurial venture, such as inventing, founding, or developing, and correlating with the activity or "domain" as central to their self-identity.

Passion influences critical outcomes such as creativity in developing entrepreneurial intentions, entrepreneurial persistence, employees' commitment, entrepreneurial performance, technological innovation, strategic change, and venture investment. Furthermore, researchers have shown that EP is positively associated with entrepreneurial intention. Some researchers have also explored the relationship between EP and venture growth. Even though the literature explores the relationship between EP and entrepreneurial intention and the relationship between EP and venture growth, the relationship between EP and growth intention is still an understudied research area with no existing research in the RRR women entrepreneurship context.

Passion motivates people to overcome obstacles when accomplishing complex tasks, which influences business growth positively. Because this is a complex issue, it will be beneficial to understand the antecedents that lead to EP. In their exploration of this question, scholars have identified several personal and social aspects that contribute to entrepreneurial passion. Besides its benefits, researchers have focused more on outcomes than on antecedents. In their review, Newman, et al. found that only 25 of the 60 empirical research papers published on entrepreneurial passion examined its antecedents. The origin of passion is not yet completely understood; therefore, an exploration of the antecedents of entrepreneurial passion is needed. According to Webb, et al., examining entrepreneurial identities and identity theory may provide intriguing new insights into the entrepreneurship process. An identity theory lens can illuminate the origins of passion and the factors that influence its growth.

According to a growing body of research, passion is an important part of entrepreneurship, and it plays a substantial impact on the business formation process and its outcomes. Researchers have argued that EP is an important personal trait that drives people to start businesses. Passion has been considered by researchers to be a trait-like attribute that influences the entrepreneurial process via more proximal and situation-specific motivational elements.