The Role of Competences in Shaping the Leadership Style of Female
The paper explores the leadership styles of successful UK female small business owners in light of their personal, managerial, entrepreneurial and human relation competences. Despite leadership being a critical issue in small business development, there is limited research in this area, with most past studies focusing on large corporate contexts. Additionally, the context of small female enterprises remains a terra incognita. Employing a mixed method approach, and adopting a combination of explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis, along with univariate and multivariate analyses, we make two distinct contributions to the literature. First, and for the first time, we specifically investigate the role of owners' competences in shaping leadership style among female owned business owners. Second, we present a detailed leadership profile of successful women entrepreneurs in the UK. Vassiliki Bamiatzi is Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategy at Leeds University Business School Sally Jones is a Lecturer in Enterprise at Leeds University Business School Siwan Mitchelmore is a Lecturer in Business and Management at Bangor Business School, Bangor University Konstantinos Nikolopoulos is Professor in Decision Sciences, at Bangor Business School, Bangor University