A Chip off the Old Block? Effects of Gender Homophily on Intergenerational Transmission of Entrepreneurial Behavior.
| Autor | de Melo, Felipe Luiz Neves Bezerra |
| Cargo | Research Article |
INTRODUCTION
Individuals develop occupational expectations using their social networks as a reference, particularly with people they consider close and similar (Kilic & Kuzey, 2016; Mugwati & Bakunda, 2019). Regarding the intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurial behavior, the family represents a source of information and inspiration (Staniewski & Awruk, 2021), since parents are important socializing agents that influence the interests of their children's entrepreneurial career (Mishkin, 2021; Moreno-Gomez et al., 2019). The literature shows that having entrepreneurial parents is positively related to an increase in the probability of subjects becoming entrepreneurs (Mishkin, 2021). Thus, this transmission of entrepreneurial behavior, according to the social learning theory (Bandura, 1986), is mediated not only by observation but also by social interaction with parents (Mishkin, 2021; Staniewski & Awruk, 2021). Previous studies have explored several factors that explain these results. This includes genetic factors (Nicolaou & Shane, 2009; 2010; Nofal et al., 2018), financial support (Welsh & Kaciak, 2019), transmission of values related to entrepreneurship (Colombier & Masclet, 2008; Wyrwich, 2015), the role of parents as role models for their children (Hoffmann et al., 2015; Laspita et al., 2012; Lindquist et al., 2015; Staniewski & Awruk, 2021), and how gender moderates such an effect (Mishkin, 2021; Moreno-Gomez et al., 2019).
Despite intergenerational transmission being widely recognized as a key variable in choosing entrepreneurship as a career (Hopp et al., 2019; Mishkin, 2021; Sahinidis et al., 2019; Staniewski & Awruk, 2021), few studies, however, have investigated this process, emphasizing the importance of verifying heterogeneous effects according to the gender of parents and children (Moreno-Gomez et al., 2019) and the literature has referred to this attraction for similarity as gender homophily, indicating that the enterprising father exerts greater influence on sons than on daughters and, in turn, the mother exerts greater influence on daughters (Laspita et al., 2012; Hoffmann et al., 2015; Mishkin, 2021; Moreno-Gomez et al., 2019). Thus, knowledge about this mechanism can increase the understanding of gender dynamics in the transmission of entrepreneurship, which, more generally, is an issue still little explored (Mishkin, 2021; Moreno-Gomez et al., 2019).
Given this gap, the aim of this article is to assess whether gender is associated with the intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurial behavior. Thus, the main hypothesis of this study is that the intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurial behavior is influenced by gender homophily, that is, the effect is potentiated if parents and children share the same gender (Chlosta et al., 2012; Hoffmann et al., 2015; Laspita et al., 2012; Lindquist et al., 2015). This study therefore highlights the importance of two determinants of entrepreneurial behavior: the influence of entrepreneurial parents and gender homophily, highlighting how they work together to support aspirations for entrepreneurship as a career.
To achieve the proposed objective, we selected the probit regression method as an identification strategy. The sample is composed of 10,889 students from the Federal Institute of Rio Grande do Norte--IFRN, Brazilian institution that is a member of the Federal Network of Professional, Scientific and Technological Education, established by Law No. 11,892/2008 (Lei n. 11.892, 2008). The main areas of activity of the institutions of the Federal Network are professional and technological education, but its scope extends from elementary school to the stricto sensu doctorate.
The results show that being the child of an entrepreneurial father or mother is associated with an increase in the probability of an individual becoming an entrepreneur. In addition to the fact that the intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurial behavior is a substantial variable that explains entrepreneurship, gender homophily can potentiate this effect, which means that the probability of opening a business is greater in the cases of father-son and mother-daughter dyads. It is noteworthy that much evidence on the subject in question encompasses contexts in developed countries (Chlosta et al., 2012; Laspita et al., 2012). However, as will be presented in the literature review section, evidence for developing countries is scarce, especially in Latin American countries (Moreno-Gomez et al., 2019; Romani et al., 2021; Urbano & Alvarez, 2014). Therefore, the present research sheds light on intergenerational transmission in Brazil, a country in Latin America, in which the strengthening of entrepreneurship is vital for socioeconomic development and the generation of employment and income. Thus, knowing these particularities will also contribute to the design of public policies aimed at the reality of each country (Romani et al., 2021).
Therefore, although the literature on gender and entrepreneurship is well established, the main contribution of this research is to shed light on the association between intergenerational transmission by gender homophily and the entrepreneurial behavior of the individual--which, although it is discussed, still has a substantial part of factors that have not been explained. In addition, from a methodological point of view, these findings allow us to use parents' occupational choice as an instrumental variable of their children's entrepreneurial occupational choice in econometric and quantitative models.
The rest of the article proceeds as follows: Section 2 makes a brief review of the empirical literature. Section 3 describes the data, sample selection, variables, analysis strategy, and descriptive statistics. Section 4 examines and discusses the results. Finally, Section 5 presents the conclusions of the article.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurial behavior
There is no single definition of 'entrepreneur' that is uniformly accepted in the literature (Filion, 2021; Gartner, 1988). The term is widely used to refer to one who executes new ideas and creates new businesses, through the congruence between innovation, recognition of opportunities, risk management, action, use of resources, and added value (Filion, 2021). Thus, the entrepreneurial individual is an economic actor of change (Boutillier, 2021) and, as such, is able to identify an opportunity to start their own business and take the risk of executing such an idea, in order to create/produce a new good or even something that already exists in an innovative way (Filion, 2021; Gartner, 1988).
The decision to become an entrepreneur involves deliberate and conscious cognitive processing (Krueger et al., 2000). In summary, the willingness/desire that an individual has to get involved with opening a new business represents their entrepreneurial intent (EI) and provides the basis for the execution of a business idea, through attitudes and characteristics such as seeking information and recognizing opportunities, persistence, propensity to take calculated risks, initiative, networking, planning, among other attributes (Anwar et al., 2022; Krueger et al., 2000). This set of characteristics and attitudes is associated with entrepreneurial behavior (EB) (Kumar & Shukla, 2022; McClelland, 1987). However, the relationship between entrepreneurial intention and behavior becomes a complex process, given the influence of social and contextual/environmental factors on such conceptions (Kumar & Shukla, 2022).
Entrepreneurial intent (EI) can be defined as a conscious state of mind and spirit, which reflects an individual's willingness and/or desire to start a business (Linan & Chen, 2009), preceding, therefore, the action/decision to undertake a business venture (Fini et al., 2012; Linan & Fayolle, 2015). In other words, EI involves situational and personal characteristics, representing the individual's predisposition to perform a certain behavior and, in this case, their tendency to become an entrepreneur (Fayolle & Gailly, 2015; Linan & Chen, 2009; Linan & Fayolle, 2015). Entrepreneurial behavior (EB) encompasses a set of behavioral characteristics that may be more linked to successful entrepreneurs (McClelland, 1987). Thereby, McClelland (1987) was one of the first scholars to argue that the motivation to undertake a business venture is associated with three types of needs: (a) achievement (relates to success); (b) power (leadership and influence to others); and (c) affiliation (association and interpersonal relationships). Additionally, entrepreneurial behavior brings together personality traits and attributes such as: innovation, leadership, creativity, initiative, learning ability, optimism, results orientation, self-confidence, flexibility, among other profiles (Filion, 2021; Gartner, 1988).
Thus, entrepreneurial behavior can be predicted by entrepreneurial intention (Kumar & Shukla, 2022), that is, EI becomes the prerequisite for carrying out EB (Filion, 2021; Gartner, 1988). Previous literature strengthens this argument, assuming that entrepreneurial intentions are a predictor of entrepreneurial behavior, so that the will to undertake a business venture leads the individual to have attitudes and behavioral characteristics to carry out such activity (Anwar et al., 2022; Fayolle & Gailly, 2015; Krueger et al., 2000).
Recent studies have pointed out that the entrepreneurial intention of an individual is influenced by different personal, emotional, cognition, and contextual/institutional factors, being an exhausting task for researchers to predict and explain how entrepreneurial intention can be transformed into real attitude, that is, entrepreneurial behavior (Fayolle & Gailly, 2015; Krueger et al., 2000), since by affecting the intention to start a new business, one therefore affects actual entrepreneurial behavior (Anwar et al., 2022...
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