Using identity structure analysis (ISA) to investigate female entrepreneurship

The process of founding a business is for most people a period of transition entailing taking on a new role. Such a transition will often result in a change of values and beliefs. For some women, values ascribed to the entrepreneur will conflict with conventional feminine values. Previous researchers have classified women in accordance with their degree of attachment to entrepreneurial values and conventionally defined masculine-feminine values (Goffee and Scase 1985, Cromie and Hayes 1987), but to date there has been little attempt to examine the process of change in women's values and beliefs as a result of business start-up. This paper reports on the first attempt to use Identity Structure Analysis (Weinreich 1980/1986/1988) to investigate entrepreneurship: in this case, specifically female entrepreneurship.