Youth attitude to entrepreneurship in Eastern and Central European countries: Gender aspect

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a significant role in income generation, job creation, poverty reduction and reducing income inequality of all countries, regardless of the level of development. Nevertheless, in developing countries, they are exposed to several challenges affecting their business operations and growth. Among others, access to external financing has been cited to be the most pressing challenge for SMEs in developing economies. The lack of accessibility has been indicated to result from the deficiencies observed from both financial institutions and SMEs. Further, it has been discovered that from the SMEs’ perspective, gender, among other entrepreneurial characteristics, has a role in accessing finance. This paper surveys a sample of 109 SMEs in the Democratic Republic of Congo not only to find what are the challenges faced in seeking finance, but also to investigate the extent to which gender impacts access to finance. The evidence gathered shows that finance is really constraining, there are more rejections than approvals of finance due to the lack of collateral, high interest rates and the inability of SMEs to develop attractive and bankable projects. With regards to gender, the findings were somehow assuring in the sense that when both women and men apply for external finance, they stand the same chances of accessing finance. Recommendations were established to all the actors. SMEs must put more effort into regulating their businesses in order to reduce their risks and build strong relationships with lenders. Financial institutions should not only reconsider the interest rates as they were perceived to be extremely high, but also train SMEs to be “more bankable”. Lastly, the Government should implement policies to support firms and render the business environment more appealing for both SMEs and financial institutions.

Financial risk tolerance refers to the amount of risk a person is willing to take when making financial decisions. Previous researchers have found that demographic factors when used as independent variables to have an effect on the risk tolerance behavior of investors. Within this study, emphasis was given to gender and age within a sample of South African investors. Not much research on risk tolerance and demographics has been done in South Africa. Hence, an opportunity for further research within this field emerged. This study aimed to contribute towards the accurate risk profiling of South African investors based on their level of risk tolerance considering their gender and age. This study can be used as a future forecasting tool for investment companies to predict risk tolerance levels based on gender and age levels. Results from this study correspond to previous studies where male investors are more risk tolerant than female investors. A statistical difference was also found between male and female investors within the age categories of 35-49 years and investors older than 50 years. All age categories were found to be more risk tolerant for investors older than 50 years based on the binary regression.

The purpose of this study is to determine the difference between three antecedent variables of performance and the impact on employee job performance through reward, compared with institutions led by men and women. The method used was survey method. Quantitative explanation method was also used to explain the relation, difference, and influence between the variables. The type of data in this research is quantitative data. The data used in this study are primary those from the respondents' perception of the variables used. The population in this study was all bank employees in Jakarta in PT Bank X Tbk, PT Bank Negara Indonesia Tbk, PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia Tbk, PT Bank Tabungan Negara and Bank BCA. The research sample consisted of employees who directly worked under female and male middle managers in the same division. The sampling method was probability sampling according to which all population units have chance to be sampled because of the population’s homogeneity. The sample was determined by simple random sampling. Sampling of male and female employees was proportion of multistage random sampling method and sampling using procedure. To solve the problems of this study Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis tool was employed using Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) 5 software. The result showed that the performance of employees led by male middle managers was determined by organizational culture and employee work motivation, but transactional leadership style couldn’t influence employee performance. Female managers’ leadership style had reciprocal influence on organizational culture while male managers’ leadership style didn’t have reciprocal influence on organizational culture. Employee work motivation was influenced by male and female middle managers’ leadership style. The reward received by employees led by male and female middle managers was influenced by employee performance. The job satisfaction of employees led by male and female middle managers was determined by intrinsic and extrinsic rewards they received. Male middle managers generally applied transactional leadership style while female used transactional and transformational leadership styles. Gender difference caused differences in behaviors, mentality, and emotional characteristics which are the results of socio-cultural constructs in the society which produced differences in leadership style, behavior and work attitude.