UNC Asheville Professor Susan Clark Muntean: A Gender Perspective in the World of Entrepreneurship
Throughout recent years, entrepreneurship has become a popular topic of discussion among the academic community, organizations and media platforms. Entrepreneurial thinking is associated with innovation and creativity and is now seen as a substantial way of differentiating a company or brand and maintaining a competitive edge in business. In the realm of higher education, the increase of student-based entrepreneurship education has resulted in a new understanding around the idea of jobs and careers, causing individuals to recognize the power of their own decision-making.
UNC Asheville Associate Professor of Management Susan Clark Muntean has been studying entrepreneurial support organizations, entrepreneurial ecosystems, family businesses, and corporations in regards to governance, strategy, politics, and equity issues. Her research seeks to help organizations improve their understanding of these concepts. She describes entrepreneurship as a social practice, deriving resources from communities, support systems and institutions, collectively resulting in an entrepreneurial ecosystem.
“I look at entrepreneurship as a social practice drawing together communities, support institutions, and entrepreneurs into complex ecosystems,” Clark Muntean says. “The ecosystem just means the whole environment in which entrepreneurs engage in entrepreneurial activities.”
Specifically, she has been studying how to best support women entrepreneurs for the last ten years. Her findings will soon be presented in her upcoming book co-authored with Banu Ozkazanc-Pan titled “Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: A Gender Perspective” published by Cambridge University Press. The publication offers a holistic approach that brings together multiple disciplines including insights from sociology, economics, political science and feminist scholarship to develop a stronger understanding of the gender gap in the entrepreneurship sector.
Throughout the last two decades, questions such as “How can a woman pitch more like a man?” or “How can women be as confident as men?” have created a framework for viewing women in entrepreneurship as deficits to the norm, Clark Muntean describes. This framework of implicit bias is often the reason why women receive substantially less equity investment and other forms of support that would help grow their new ventures.
“The reasons that women are not getting as much funding is due to things like implicit bias,” Clark Muntean says. “They ask women more questions about the downside of the business model and the risks they face more than the upside potential, novelty and impact, and that’s a subtle thing, but that means women have to defend themselves and prove themselves and prove they are equally worthy of investment.”
This perspective is exactly what Clark Muntean seeks to turn around by sharing her research with organizations, decision-makers and policy-makers. Ultimately, training decision-makers to have less biases is a key component of supporting women in entrepreneurial ventures, as well as creating economic equity by looking at the bigger picture.
“The big picture is women’s economic impact is in the billions,” Clark Muntean explains. “And if we are not utilizing the best talent out there and not funding the best ideas, everybody is worse off if we don’t close the gap.”
Throughout her research, Clark Muntean has also closed the gap on many myths about the behavior of women entrepreneurs. “There’s kind of an assumption that women are less ambitious, or that women are less confident, and that’s a myth,” she describes. “While it is true that women can be more cautious or more reserved when it comes to risk-tolerance, this is a rational response to the bar being much higher to reach for them relative to men,” she further explains.
According to Clark Muntean, because people question women more, women naturally become more cautious whereas men tend to be more flippant and overly confident. But overconfidence is not necessarily a good thing, and in fact, women’s preparedness can be advantageous.
“The problem with hyper-aggressive attitudes, overconfidence and the exhibition of dynamic charisma, is that it can lead to a house of cards crashing down” she says. “So women being a little more reserved and over prepared is not a bad thing. Investing in women businesses is a smart strategy, because they tend to found more sustainable businesses relative to male-founded businesses led by aggressive risk-takers that tend to soar, but then crash and burn too often as a result of a mix of hubris, pie-in-the-sky thinking, and too rapid growth that is difficult to sustain over the long haul.”
But this doesn’t mean women shouldn’t take calculated risks, she says. In fact, if women are too cautious and don’t take risks, they might not take chances, which could result in lack of exposure and less financing. “Take informed risks. Take appropriate risks, ask for help and expand your networks,” Clark Muntean advises. “If I was going to coach an individual woman, I would say you have to show up. It’s important to get your idea out there and receive early-stage feedback, to seek mentors,” she says. While there are no guarantees, Clark Muntean says that this will improve a woman’s probability of success.
Clark Muntean hopes to see that as more women enter the entrepreneurial world, the more businesses will incorporate empathetic practices. “I hope that women’s contributions can be more empathetic and highly impactful, not just in terms of profits and making more money, “ she says. “I would really like to see a more just, humane and sustainable entrepreneurship with alternative business models in which founders are concerned not only about making a profit, but also about benefiting the environment and solving myriad social problems,” she explains. “I am hoping that when more women enter the entrepreneurial world, that we will ultimately have better businesses and a more just and sustainable economy as a result.”
Contact Information & Bio:
Susan Clark Muntean is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of North Carolina Asheville. She holds a M.B.A. from the University of Oregon and a P.h.D from the University of California, San Diego. She teaches courses in Management, Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior and Theory, and Consulting. Susan is also active in the Asheville entrepreneurship community as a mentor, public speaker, author, and advisory board member. Her co-authored book is available electronically with a hard copy publication date expected in 2022.
Susan Clark Muntean, PhD.
UNC Asheville
smuntean.wp.unca.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-clark-muntean-6380b630/
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/entrepreneurial-ecosystems/F303A1FDC37C9609E1273613B3E0FF43
Written by Rosa Linda Fallon