Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Gender gap in innovation: an institutionalist explanation

Gender gap in innovation: an institutionalist explanation Purpose – The aim of this paper is to contribute to knowledge on innovation from a gender perspective, and to investigate how environment affects the process of innovation by women. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical study uses a Structural Equations Model of a Partial Least Squared (PLS) technique. Data of 40 countries from around the world were collected from 2008. Findings – Institutional environment matters for innovative activity by women. An innovative thinking is required for integrating the gender perspective in innovative milieus in order to enrich, diversify and promote stronger innovation activities, mobilising unexploited opportunities for managers in the business sector, and for policy makers in the public one. Research limitations/implications – A new sex‐disaggregated dataset will allow us to enlarge and improve upon this study. A longitudinal study would be extremely useful, but for the moment, there are no available data of this kind. Practical implications – Policies designed to reduce the gap for women in innovation activities have to fight against gender segregation in the job market and gender differences in education and training. They must increase flexibility in the workplace, provide more help to conciliate family and working lives, and reduce the gap in family responsibilities taken on by women. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the cross‐over of knowledge between innovation and gender, and reduces the lack of information on how external factors may impact innovative behaviour by gender. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Management Decision Emerald Publishing

Gender gap in innovation: an institutionalist explanation

Management Decision , Volume 52 (2): 15 – Mar 11, 2014

Loading next page...
 
/lp/emerald-publishing/gender-gap-in-innovation-an-institutionalist-explanation-jreVLikvPR

References (49)

Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.
ISSN
0025-1747
DOI
10.1108/MD-07-2012-0533
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to contribute to knowledge on innovation from a gender perspective, and to investigate how environment affects the process of innovation by women. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical study uses a Structural Equations Model of a Partial Least Squared (PLS) technique. Data of 40 countries from around the world were collected from 2008. Findings – Institutional environment matters for innovative activity by women. An innovative thinking is required for integrating the gender perspective in innovative milieus in order to enrich, diversify and promote stronger innovation activities, mobilising unexploited opportunities for managers in the business sector, and for policy makers in the public one. Research limitations/implications – A new sex‐disaggregated dataset will allow us to enlarge and improve upon this study. A longitudinal study would be extremely useful, but for the moment, there are no available data of this kind. Practical implications – Policies designed to reduce the gap for women in innovation activities have to fight against gender segregation in the job market and gender differences in education and training. They must increase flexibility in the workplace, provide more help to conciliate family and working lives, and reduce the gap in family responsibilities taken on by women. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the cross‐over of knowledge between innovation and gender, and reduces the lack of information on how external factors may impact innovative behaviour by gender.

Journal

Management DecisionEmerald Publishing

Published: Mar 11, 2014

Keywords: Gender; Innovation; PLS; Environmental impact

There are no references for this article.