Julia Rouse - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Julia Rouse

International Journal of Management Reviews, 2017

Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including ... more Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author's name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pagination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award.

Although rarely quantified, the cost of maternity protection in SMEs is widely perceived to be gr... more Although rarely quantified, the cost of maternity protection in SMEs is widely perceived to be greater than the benefits and to lead to competitive disadvantage. This review suggests that effective maternity protection is not only feasible in SMEs but can offer a range of positive productivity-related outcomes for enterprises. To achieve these positive effects, and for maternity, paternity and family responsibilities to become “a normal fact of business life”, maternity protection and other work-family balance measures need to fit into the practices and interests of SMEs. The report proposes a multi-pronged approach, involving strategies adopted at state, market, community and family levels to combat gender inequality, support SMEs and ultimately achieve wider development objectives.

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 2006

PurposeThis paper asks whether enterprise programmes are overcoming the finance gap faced by thei... more PurposeThis paper asks whether enterprise programmes are overcoming the finance gap faced by their disadvantaged participants. Specifically, the paper seeks to assessthe level of finance invested by participants on a leading UK enterprise programme, the New Entrepreneur Scholarships (NES).Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on a postal and e‐survey of participants on a leading UK enterprise programme, reporting on 472 respondents. Three capital structure variables (personal investment, external private investment and grants) are employed to analyse the importance of various types of funding in NES businesses. These figures are compared with published data about use of different types of finance, including principal sources of funding, in UK start‐ups. Descriptive statistics of perceptions of under‐capitalisation, and needs for additional funding, are also reported.FindingsNES Scholars make significantly lower start‐up investment than is typical in UK small businesses, particu...

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, 2013

ABSTRACT

Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 2011

Business start-up is promoted to the labour-market disadvantaged internationally. This policy inc... more Business start-up is promoted to the labour-market disadvantaged internationally. This policy increasingly draws on the concept of social inclusion. In this paper we define ‘enterprise inclusion’ policy as situating the chance to start a viable business as a right and supporting the multiply disadvantaged to overcome strong barriers to enterprise. We draw on the resource-based view of entrepreneurship to argue that viable business ownership is contingent on access to resources. We explore how access to a primary business resource—start-up finance—relates to intersecting social disadvantages. We report a complex pattern of financial exclusion. Rather than supporting the concept of interconnecting yet separate social divisions, as argued under social inclusion theory, this supports a class-based interpretation of exclusion from enterprise finance. New research and policy agendas are outlined.

Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 2014

We explore how socially embedded life courses of individuals within Britain affect the resources ... more We explore how socially embedded life courses of individuals within Britain affect the resources they have available and their capacity to apply those resources to start-up. We propose that there will be common pathways to entrepreneurship from privileged resource ownership and test our propositions by modelling a specific life course framework, based on class and gender. We operationalize our model employing 18 waves of the British Household Panel Survey and event history random effect logistic regression modelling. Our hypotheses receive broad support. Business start-up in Britain is primarily made from privileged class backgrounds that enable resource acquisition and are a means of reproducing or defending prosperity. The poor avoid entrepreneurship except when low household income threatens further downward mobility and entrepreneurship is a more attractive option. We find that gendered childcare responsibilities disrupt class-based pathways to entrepreneurship. We interpret the implications of this study for understanding entrepreneurship and society and suggest research directions.

services. Families were approached by post and in person. A total of 370 questionnaires were sent... more services. Families were approached by post and in person. A total of 370 questionnaires were sent out and 81 questionnaires were completed and returned. Key findings Awareness of Sure Start • Four out of five families are aware of Blacon Sure Start. A key challenge is to increase awareness to be universal. • About 50% of families would like more information about the range of services offered by Sure Start and other local organisations. Use of Local Services • The health visiting and midwifery services are those most commonly accessed by Sure Start families.

We outline a feminist critical realist framework for conceptualising and researching entrepreneur... more We outline a feminist critical realist framework for conceptualising and researching entrepreneurial practice in pregnancy and hope this will inspire a global programme of empirical research regarding embodied contexts, practices and outcomes. We outline a critical realist ontology to propose a framework for researching entrepreneur pregnancy that relies on Archer’s morphogenetic cycle of interaction between the natural body, laminated systems of socio-cultural contexts and a reflexive agent. Our ontology emphasises that entrepreneurs are differently positioned within emergent, open systems; while generative mechanisms in the body and context are real they create variable events for differently positioned women. The multi-level system of contexts we propose are: the global systems of pro-masculine capitalism; meso-level institutions that mediate, subvert or enhance pro-masculine capitalism, and; practice relations in markets, businesses and families. We reveal relations hitherto hid...

International Small Business Journal, 2021

We peer inside the notion that small firm employment relations are a matter of mutual adjustment ... more We peer inside the notion that small firm employment relations are a matter of mutual adjustment to conceptualise a key relation subject to negotiation as space–time–energy rhythms. Businesses must...

Most British Bangladeshi women do not have paid work, and the multiple barriers they face to empl... more Most British Bangladeshi women do not have paid work, and the multiple barriers they face to employment are largely unaddressed by mainstream policies, leading to social exclusion and poverty. This study reviews the viability of supporting British Bangladeshi women to transition to self-employment. Findings suggest that British Bangladeshi women have a keen interest in economic activity, including self-employment. However, scarcity of human, social, financial and labour capital inhibit the entrepreneurial process of mobilizing resources to exploit a market opportunity.

This report explores employer perspectives of Universal Credit (the new working age benefit for t... more This report explores employer perspectives of Universal Credit (the new working age benefit for those who are unemployed or on a low income), and the likely impact of ‘in-work conditionality’ on firms’ behaviour and productivity. Under the policy, working social security claimants may be expected to increase their pay through progressing and/or taking on additional hours of work (UC replaces Working Tax Credits). Employers are key to outcomes arising from active labour market policies and their response to new expectations placed on low-income workers will be pivotal to the policy’s effects. However, policy and research has neglected to consider employer perspectives of UC, or likely impact on firms’ behaviour and productivity.

Women are much less likely to found businesses than men and even less likely to lead growth busin... more Women are much less likely to found businesses than men and even less likely to lead growth businesses (ONS, 2019; Rose Review, 2018). Given that the educational attainment of girls surpasses that of boys and women’s economic activity is approaching that of men’s, the scale of this gender gap is startling. As entrepreneurship relies on combining resources to create goods and services for profitable trade (Kitching and Rouse, 2016), this review explores gendered differences in the ownership and command of resources. It focuses on the entrepreneur resources mostly commonly researched: human capital (‘know how’ emergent from education and experience), financial capital (money) and social capital (relationships through which new resources are acquired). It also points to a gap in research concerning how gender shapes ‘labour capital’ (an entrepreneurs’ ability to apply their own or other’s labour to business creation and ownership). Women’s unequal access to resources and the constraint...

Academy of Management Proceedings

We study how capability to earn from entrepreneurship emerges from (1) accrual of resources acros... more We study how capability to earn from entrepreneurship emerges from (1) accrual of resources across the life course of the individual and their household; and (2) application of resources to opportunity based on entrepreneurs’ position in household work and economic strategies following multilevel growth curve modelling using British Household Panel Survey(BHPS) data. We provide evidence of a higher class pathway to entrepreneur earning and propose arguments that account for a complex explanation for earnings from entrepreneurship due to selection effects in terms of the types of people in each class starting businesses and mediating effects from class cultures and household strategies. We detect the possibility of some specific routes of social mobility to entrepreneur earnings that warrant further research. Household strategies have a much more unequivocal effect on entrepreneur earnings, which are higher if entrepreneur labour is unfettered by housework and childcare and motivated by sole breadwinner re...

International Small Business Journal: Researching Entrepreneurship

We evaluate whether the theory of effectuation provides – or could provide – a powerful causal ex... more We evaluate whether the theory of effectuation provides – or could provide – a powerful causal explanation of the process of new venture creation. We do this by conducting an analysis of the principal concepts introduced by effectuation theory. Effectuation theory has become a highly influential cognitive science-based approach to understanding how nascent entrepreneurs start businesses under conditions of uncertainty. But by reducing the process of venture creation to a decision-making logic, effectuation theory pays insufficient regard to the substantial, pervasive and enduring influence of social-structural and cultural contexts on venture creation. Powerful explanations should conceive of venture creation as a sociohistorical process emergent from the interaction of structural, cultural and agential causal powers and must be able to theorise, fallibly, how nascent entrepreneurs form particular firms in particular times and places. We conclude that effectuation’s contribution to ...