A Phenomenological Exploration of the Mentoring Experiences of Women Business Owners in Central Florida
Main Article Content
Abstract
Women have been starting businesses at twice the rate of men in the United States, yet women-owned businesses have had lower sales, profits, and survival rates. Although entrepreneurship centers and other institutions have developed training and developmental programs to support nascent entrepreneurs, there is a need for more resources to help established businesses survive and grow, especially women-owned businesses. Therefore, a qualitative phenomenological study was conducted using a purposive sample of 10 women business owners in Central Florida who were protégés in an entrepreneurial mentoring program. The purpose was to understand the aspects of mentoring that were perceived to foster successful business and personal experiences and outcomes. The study used Moustakas’ phenomenological approach that included in-depth, open-ended interviews. According to study participants, the aspects of mentoring that were perceived to foster successful business and personal experiences and outcomes were: (a) access to an ad hoc mentoring team of subject matter experts, (b) opportunities to learn essential business skills, (c) psychosocial support from mentors, and (d) networking and relationship-building opportunities. The study contributes to the developmental networks knowledge base by describing how group mentoring provides career and psychosocial support to established women business owners. Future research should explore the mentoring experiences of early-stage women entrepreneurs, investigate gender differences within the entrepreneurial mentoring context, and examine how the developmental networks of women business owners grow and change over time.
Article Details
Section
Once the manuscript is accepted for publication, authors shall transfer the copyright to the publisher. If the submitted manuscript is not accepted for printing by the journal, the authors shall retain all their rights. The following rights on the manuscript are transferred to the publisher, including any supplementary materials and any parts, extracts or elements of the manuscript:
- the right to reproduce and distribute the manuscript in printed form, including print-on-demand;
- the right to print prepublications, reprints and special editions of the manuscript;
- the right to translate the manuscript into other languages;
- the right to reproduce the manuscript using photomechanical or similar means including, but not limited to photocopy, and the right to distribute these copies;
- the right to reproduce and distribute the manuscript electronically or optically using and all data carriers or storage media, and especially in machine readable/digitalized form on data carriers such as hard drive, CD-ROM, DVD, Blu-ray Disc (BD), Mini Disc, data tapes, and the right to reproduce and distribute the article via these data carriers;
- the right to store the manuscript in databases, including online databases, as well as the right to transmit the manuscript in all technical systems and modes;
- the right to make the manuscript available to the public or to closed user groups on individual demand, for use on monitors or other readers (including e-books), and in printable form for the user, either via the Internet, online service, or via internal or external networks.
Authors reserve the copyright to published articles and have the right to use the article in the same manner like third parties in accordance with the licence Attribution-Non-Commercial-Non-Derivate 4.0 International (CC BY NC ND). Thereby they must quote the basic bibliographic data of the source article published in the journal (authors, article title, journal title, volume, pagination).