Competitive strategy decisions and the influence of gender: study of corporate women in Spain

Abstract

In the last decades there has been an evident increase in research and

publications of the phenomenon of women entrepreneurs, due to the

increase of women entrepreneurs in the business world. Unfortunately,

the number of women entrepreneurs is even lower than men, and the

performance of their companies is lower than of firms controlled by men.

The current research aims to discover whether men and women have

different strategic formulations, by analyzing competitive strategies of

differentiation, innovation and market expansion. The results were obtained

from a sample of the adult population survey (APS) Global Entrepreneurship

Monitor of Spain in 2009 using a logit model, it was found

that there are not large differences in strategic behavior between men

and women, and differences were found only in the competitive strategy

of innovation, where being a woman influences positively the selection

of this strategy.