'Deconstructing' entrepreneurial self-efficacy: a gendered perspective on the impact of ESE and community entrepreneurial culture on the financial strategies and performance of new firms

We examine the impact of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) and community entrepreneurial culture on financial strategy and firm performance, by gender. In doing so, we 'deconstruct' both ESE and community culture into various components and view them as multidimensional constructs. Our data sample consists of 1214 firms included in the second Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics. Our findings reveal that men raised larger amounts of financial capital than women did from both internal and external sources. Furthermore, higher levels of ESE were associated with a greater willingness to raise capital from external sources. In contrast, the entrepreneur's perceptions of community entrepreneurial culture had no impact on securing financial capital from either internal or external sources for either gender. Our results also revealed gender differences in the area of performance expectations. For both women and men, higher levels of ESE and the availability of financial capital enhanced performance expectations, whereas community entrepreneurial culture contributed to higher performance expectations for men only. This discrepancy suggests that ESE is even more important for women entrepreneurs in the sense that they need higher levels of self-confidence in order to overcome their perceptions of institutional barriers for securing financial capital and growing their firms.