An Exploratory Study of Women Entrepreneurship: Developing Conceptual Framework by Applying Attribution Theory for Describing Successful Single Mother Entrepreneurs

Abstract

Women entrepreneurs have now been recognized as a driving force for the economies of many countries. Women entrepreneur successfully contributed to job opportunity and improved the quality of life. Women entrepreneurs, especially single mother entrepreneurs, have gone through countless obstacles and lowest point in their personal life experience, which transformed them into independent and successful women. This paper is exploring the Attribution Theory as the underpinning theory and then proposed a conceptual framework explaining individual factors and situational factors towards women entrepreneurship mainly to describe the unique phenomenon of successful single mother entrepreneurs. The element of individual factors, namely cognitive, motivation, personality trait and competencies, are crucial for explaining single mother entrepreneur’s success. In contrast, situational factors like economics, political and social are added value to the single mother entrepreneur’s business achievement. Further research is needed to establish a viable women entrepreneurship model, especially for single mother entrepreneurs. The existing theoretical is still unexplored and cannot explain women entrepreneurship's phenomena, especially single mother entrepreneurs. Therefore, this discussion offers some direction for future research in women entrepreneurship, particularly on the model of successful single mother entrepreneurs.