Women entrepreneurs' business goals and performance: In harmony?

Research on performance and business success has captured attention of many researchers in the female entrepreneurship field. Nevertheless, there is still enough controversy on how to measure performance and which indicators should be taken into account, mainly when there are comparative studies between men and women entrepreneurs. In fact, controversy has arisen regarding if companies created by women have a higher rate of failure or lower performance in comparison with those created by men (Brush, 1992; Fischer et al.,1993; Kalleberg & Leicht, 1991; Srinivasan et al., 1994). Performance studies have used different variables to measure it, in a great majority, they have only been focused on measuring economic performance (Sexton & Robinson, 1989; Watson, 2002; Watson & Robinson, 2003) without considering other type of measurements, that can be important for women entrepreneurs, apart from the economic ones. Studies that have delved into this topic, analyzed others aspects than economic results of performance and argued that male and female entrepreneurs pursue different business goals. Entrepreneurial women generally emphasize social goals, while male entrepreneurs emphasize economic goals (Brush, 1992; Holmquist & Sundin, 1989; Lamolla, 2005). In this paper we analyse only women entrepreneurs and examine differences between their business goals and business performance.