WASHINGTON, DC - Jennifer Cliff, Nancy Langton and Howard Aldrich have received the Center for Women's Business Research's annual Best Women's Entrepreneurship Paper Award. Their paper, "On Their Own Terms? Gendered Rhetoric versus Business Behavior in Small Firms," challenges common assumptions regarding differences in female and male management styles. This study is one of the very few attempts to develop objective indices for determining if there are differences in women and men entrepreneurs' leadership styles. Based on the indices developed for this study - vertical hierarchy and written employee policies - the study found no differences between women and men business owners.

Dr. Nancy Carter, endowed chair and director of the John M. Morrison Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of St. Thomas, and a director on the Center's Board of Directors, presented the award on August 4th at the annual Academy of Management conference held in Seattle, Washington. The three winners divided the $1000 cash award.

The funding for this annual best paper competition was provided by three of the Center's past Chairs, Lois Haber, Laura Henderson and Nina McLemore. These leading women business owners recognize the value of encouraging greater academic interest in women's entrepreneurship issues, and of generating a higher level of public awareness for such research findings.

The Academy of Management selected the winning paper from among papers submitted to the Academy's Entrepreneurship Division. The Center's Best Women's Entrepreneurship Paper Award is intended to: encourage the scholarly analysis of women's entrepreneurship; enhance understanding about the attitudes, behaviors, and characteristics of women business owners and their enterprises; and increase the visibility of research conducted in this area.

"The issue of women's and men's leadership styles has generated substantial interest among business scholars and women entrepreneurs," said Dr. Myra M. Hart, chair, Center for Women's Business Research. "This study adds new knowledge to the continuing dialogue and lays solid groundwork for additional research. The Center's award is intended to stimulate this kind of high quality research and discussion about cultural and gender issues in entrepreneurship. It is one more step in increasing understanding of this vitally important social, economic and cultural phenomenon."

In their paper Aldrick, Cliff and Langton challenge the assumption that women and men business leaders establish gender-stereotypic organizational characteristics in their firms. Their data indicate that an owner's gender has no effect on the extent of a firm's bureaucracy or the femininity of its employment relationships as measured by formalization and hierarchy. Their research suggests that women and men owners manage their firms with a mix of feminine and masculine approaches. However, the owners tend to talk as if they organize and manage their firms in gender-stereotypic ways, even though they do not do so in practice. The researchers believe that this finding may help explain the persistent belief that the owner's gender leaves an identifiable imprint on organizational characteristics.

The authors raise a number of questions for future research and suggest the importance of using additional methodology to study this issue.

Jennifer Cliff is an Assistant Professor on the business faculty at the University of Alberta, Nancy Langton is Associate Professor in Organization Behaviour in the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia and Howard Aldrich is the Kenan Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at the University of North Carolina.

The paper is available at the Center's website, http://www.womensbusinessresearch.org/bestpaper2003

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