Motivation of Women Business Owners: Case of Russia and Norway

The present paper focuses on motivation of female entrepreneurs to start their business. Although motivation of entrepreneurs has been widely studied (Hisrich et al., Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 3(2), 207–221, 2006; Sarri and Trihopoulou, Women in Management Review, 20(1), 24–36, 2005), studies are often routed in male-dominated paradigm. There is a call to new research directions that do not reproduce women’s subordination but capture more and richer aspects of women’s entrepreneurship (Ahl, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 30(5), 595–621, 2006). Based on the comparative study of 33 female entrepreneurs in Norway (12) and in Russia (21), this paper illustrates that motivation to start business among females is often driven by desire to solve social problems. However, different context, “transitional” country like Russia and a developed market economy like Norway, seems to influence the motivation to establish a business differently. The study found stronger desire to contribute to society needs among female founders in Norway in comparison to observed female founders in Russia. This indicates that cultural and social context in Norway perhaps allows more possibilities for females for focusing on societal issues in business in comparison with Russia. One should keep in mind qualitative nature of the present study and consider it as an attempt to start a discussion of whether motives and thus business solution are different between the genders, a topic that deserves further investigation in future research.