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Abstract:
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aim of this research is to add new insights to the field of Mexican women entrepreneurs.
Seeing how Mexico is one of the most entrepreneurial countries in the world it is interesting to
investigate the particular segment of women entrepreneurs. However, although entrepreneurship
is widespread in Mexico, in-depth research within many aspects of women entrepreneurship is
still missing. More specifically we have chosen to approach this research through a specific
analysis of the women entrepreneurs’ networking activity since we believe that the way they
interact in their networks is essential for their success as entrepreneurs. By applying a theoretical
framework consisting of networking as well as social capital theories we set out to investigate
“How do the Mexican women entrepreneurs use the different institutions in their networks and
do they benefit from the social capital embedded in these networks?”.
Since the available data in Denmark was not sufficient for us to carry out an in-depth analysis we
decided to take a field trip to Mexico in search for more information. The fieldwork research
enabled us to provide empirical evidence that supplement the already existing data in the field of
women entrepreneurs. Furthermore, our research has the task of highlighting tendencies in the
aspect of networking in the women’s business conduct as well as encouraging further studies in
this particular field.
Among our main findings, we discovered that Mexican women entrepreneurs use their strong
networks extensively in their networking activity. More specifically, the family, and in particular
the husband, is the institution that the women turn the most to in order to obtain resources such
as support (both personal as well as business-related), financial help and encouragement. In their
networking activity the women interact through bonding with their strong ties; thus minimising
the focus of bridging and linking to weak ties. Surprisingly, the women we investigated used
their weak network ties actively, yet we indicate that the weak ties have a tendency of being of
homogeneous nature. This limits the diversity in the types of social capital the women could
make benefit from. In order to get the maximum benefit from these resources in the networks the
Mexican women entrepreneurs must be more conscious of amplifying the type of institutions
they use and the way they use them as well as interact actively in order to establish trust. The
more invested in the trust and consolidation of the networks the greater the rewards of social
capital from such can be. |
