Think entrepreneurial, think male : do entrepreneurial job advertisements deter female job seekers?

Think Entrepreneurial, Think Male:

Do Entrepreneurial Job Advertisements

Deter Female Job Seekers?

Faculty of Economics & Business

Master of Science in Business Administration

Entrepreneurship & Innovation Track

Author: Nicole de Jong

Student Number: 10871284

Date of Submission: June 23, 2016

Version: Final Version

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STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

This document is written by Nicole de Jong who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it. The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

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Table of Contents

ABSTRACT ... 5

INTRODUCTION ... 5

THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT AND HYPOTHESES ... 8

Job Advertisement Wording: A Signaling Theory Perspective on Employee Recruitment ... 8

Why do Entrepreneurially Worded Job Advertisements Appeal More to Male Job Seekers?.10 DATA AND METHOD ... 16

Design... 16 Sample ... 16 Materials ... 18 Procedure ... 21 Measures... 21 RESULTS ... 23 Preliminary Analyses ... 23

First Quantitative Manipulation Check ... 24

Second Qualitative Manipulation Check ... 26

Hypotheses Testing ... 27

Independent-samples t-test ... 27

Factorial ANOVA ... 28

Moderation Effects ... 29

DISCUSSION ... 30

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Limitations and Future Directions... 33

CONCLUSION ... 35

REFERENCES ... 37

APPENDIX A. Survey ... 40

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List of Tables and Figures Tables

Table 1 Descriptives and Correlations 24

Table 2 Descriptives one-way ANOVA 25

Table 3 one-way ANOVA 26

Table 4 Contrast 26

Table 5 Descriptives Independent-samples t-test 27

Table 6 Independent-samples t-test 28

Table 7 Factorial ANOVA 28

Table 8 Moderation Model 29

Table 9 Moderation Conditional Effect 29

Figures

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ABSTRACT

In general, women are less likely than men to pursue a career in entrepreneurship and thus it is important to study factors that encourage or impede female employment in start-up firms. In this study, the impact of wording in start-up job advertisements on job seekers’ appeal was examined. On the basis of signaling theory and stereotype activation theory, it was

hypothesized that job advertisement that contain a higher proportion of entrepreneurial wording would appeal more to job seekers and this relationship would be stronger for male compared to female job seekers. Hypotheses were tested by randomly assigning 102 business students to one of two experimental conditions and then measuring their perception of job appeal. Results indicated that male job seekers are more strongly attracted to job

advertisements that include a larger proportion of entrepreneurial words. Overall, this study found that job advertisement wording makes a difference on job appeal and that this

difference is not equally important for both genders. Practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, employment, signaling, stereotype activation, job appeal

INTRODUCTION

Entrepreneurship is associated with “masculinity” and stereotypically masculine traits such as risk-taking, competitiveness, and aggressiveness (Gupta, Turban, Wasti & Sikdar, 2009) also known as agentic traits that are usually ascribed to men (Prentice & Caranza, 2002). This societal understanding of entrepreneurship is affected by discursive practices (i.e. the way people think and compile meaning) which perpetuates the prevalent masculine stereotype of entrepreneurship (Ahl, 2006). Therefore, when men decide to pursue an entrepreneurial career they act in accordance with stereotypes, not only about how they are, but also about how they should be (Thébaud, 2015). For women, on the other hand, the decision to turn into entrepreneurship may often feel more difficult as they need to overcome both powerful societal gender stereotypes (Gupta, Turban, Bhawe, 2008; Gupta et al., 2009,

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Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002) as well as their own self-doubt and insecurity (Thébaud, 2010). Hence, it is of no surprise to find that a gender gap in entrepreneurial activity is a global phenomenon (Hindle, Klyver, & Jennings, 2009). And although Kelly, Singer and Herrington (2015) document an increase in the participation rates of female entrepreneurs among the 45 economies surveyed as part of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), in general, women are still significantly less likely than men to pursue a career in

entrepreneurship.

Also, a strong past performance demonstrates a firm’s viability and ability to grow (Dimov, Shepherd, & Sutcliffe, 2007). A start-up, however, is regarded as highly uncertain because of its lack of operating history, which raises concerns about the startup’s viability and makes it difficult for outsiders such as job seekers to assess the future performance potential (Daily, Certo, & Dalton, 2005). In addition, the ratio of success and failure for each start-up firm is almost one meaning that roughly the same numbers of firms start and close each year (Kelly et al., 2015). Hence, because of this uncertainty and high failure rate the job security is questioned because start-up firms cannot guarantee this as much as compared to established firms. Generally speaking, people prefer less than more uncertainty and in particular, women are more risk averse than men (Borghans, Heckman, Golsteyn, & Meijers, 2009). Start-up firms are characterized by a lot of risk, failure and uncertainty and this might explain why women in particular pursue to a lesser extent a career in entrepreneurship.

However, an important, yet understudied, mechanism contributing to entrepreneurship as a gendered field is grounded in a related finding that past employment history in smaller and newer firms such as start-ups, which is associated with entrepreneurial entry and success (Sørensen, & Phillips, 2011; Sørensen, & Fassiotto, 2011), is also gendered (Burton, Dahl, & Sorenson, 2016). To put it differently, women are underrepresented in the workforce of firms

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that are the best “jumping boards” into entrepreneurship. It is therefore crucial to study factors that encourage or impede female employment in start-up firms.

While many factors, at several levels of analysis, and from diverse perspectives, may be relevant here, I suggest that an important starting point for research on women’s

underrepresentation in entrepreneurship will involve looking into the social structures that create, maintain, and recreate gender inequality as part of the recruitment and hiring practices used by start-up firms. More specifically, I follow Gaucher, Friesen and Kay (2011) who showed that gendered wording in job advertisements act as subtle mechanisms that uphold gender inequality by keeping women out of male-dominated jobs. Further, I build on the well-documented stereotype of entrepreneurship as masculine (Gupta et al., 2009), and the

resulting overlap between words describing masculine traits and words describing entrepreneurial traits (Gupta et al., 2009), to ask the following research question:

“What is the impact of entrepreneurially worded job advertisements on job seekers’ appeal to these jobs, and how does gender moderate this relationship?”

I then turn to develop and experimentally test a conceptual model using insights from signaling theory (Spence, 1973) to predict that start-up job advertisements signaling a strong entrepreneurial message by using a greater proportion of entrepreneurial words will be more attractive for male than for female job seekers.

This study offers two main contributions to theory. First, this study extends existing research on the use of gendered wording in job advertisements (Gaucher et al., 2011) by specifically focusing on an entrepreneurial setting. As far as I know, this is the first study to look at the possibly biasing effect created by the popular use of entrepreneurial wording in recruitment materials. This is an important mechanism that could possibly explain the

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firms regarding their content of recruitment materials that are signaling an entrepreneurial, masculine working environment as these firms might benefit from a greater understanding of how potential job seekers interpret and react to the use of entrepreneurial wording in job advertisements. Second, by changing entrepreneurially worded job advertisements into gender-neutral worded job advertisements this study attempts to overcome the gender stereotype of entrepreneurship as being a male-dominated occupation in order to increase women’s intentions to pursue entrepreneurship.

In order to reach a comprehensive conclusion, the remainder of this study is structured as follows. First, the theoretical background for the model is explained and leads to the formulation of hypotheses. Subsequently, the sample and methodology are discussed. Finally, the results section details the findings, followed by the discussion that elaborates on the theoretical contributions of the study, its practical implications as well as its limitations and opportunities for future research it entails.

THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT AND HYPOTHESES

This section discusses the relevant theories taken into consideration to construct a conceptual model and hypotheses. Specifically, insights from signaling theory, gender role congruity theory and gender stereotype activation are introduced leading to the graphical representation of the specific hypotheses in a conceptual model.

Job Advertisement Wording: A Signaling Theory Perspective on Employee Recruitment Signaling theory (Spence, 1973) is important to human resource management, where a number of studies have examined signaling that occurs during the recruitment process (Suazo, Martínez, & Sandoval, 2009). In the recruitment context signaling theory is generally used to explain how job seekers attraction to a recruiting firm may be affected by information, or signals, about a firm’s characteristics revealed during recruitment activities. Job seekers are

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likely to receive signals from start-up firms via the distribution of their job advertisements. Specifically, signaling theory in this study is applied on employee recruitment to show what influence the role of wording used in job advertisements of start-ups can have on job appeal of job seekers. Connelly, Certo, Ireland and Reutzel (2011) found four key elements of signaling theory: signaler, receiver, signal and feedback. Signalers are insiders who hold information that outsiders cannot directly access. In this context, these are employees or recruiters working for start-ups that are responsible for the creation of job advertisements.

Receivers are outsiders who do not have access to all the information and in this context are

potential male and female job seekers. Signals are the information sent from the signaler to the receiver, in this case the content, tone and lay-out of job advertisements. Feedback is the response to the received signal returned by the receiver to the signaler and shows the

effectiveness of the signal. In this context, this would indicate if a job seeker feels the job advertisement appeals to him or her and the potential applicant will show that by either applying to the job or not. Feedback can serve as the basis for signalers to determine if the message is interpreted well and if refinement of signals is required. In so far as signals are valued also depends on the receiver’s attention which means to the extent that receivers actively look for signals and whether signals are received or not. Further, signals can be positive or negative, intentional or unintentional and be interpreted and translated into

perceived meaning which may depend on the knowledge and the social context of the receiver (Connelly et al., 2011).

In the absence of information about the characteristics of a start-up firm, potential job seekers form impressions of a start-up firm based on information, or signals, conveyed to them through recruitment materials such as job advertisements (Rynes, 1991). Previous research showed that job seekers interpret many recruitment-related activities and information as signals of organizational characteristics (Collins & Stevens, 2002; Turban & Cable, 2003).

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Celani and Singh (2011) argue that applicants are likely to become more attracted to a firm when they are exposed to recruitment advertising that signal traits of which the applicants believe they share those traits with that firm. The greater the extent to which job seekers perceive similar characteristics between themselves and the recruiting firm the greater the extent to which job seekers will identify with and thus feel attracted to the recruiting firm. Concerning this study, start-up firms that want to recruit employees might want to take into account the wording (e.g. the choose of words to describe the desired traits, skills or

competences) used in their job advertisements because it can signal job appeal and be one of the reasons why job seekers feel encouraged to apply to the job. Similar to Celani and Singh (2011) this study argues that job seekers can develop a perception that they share similar characteristics with a start-up firm and can become more attracted to that firm through the interpretation of recruitment signals in job advertisements that communicate entrepreneurial words. This results in the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1. All else being equal, the proportion of entrepreneurial wording in start-up job advertisements positively affects job seekers’ appeal for that job.

Why do Entrepreneurially Worded Job Advertisements Appeal More to Male Job Seekers?

Not only might the wording used in job advertisements signal job appeal for job seekers, also the well-known gender stereotypes can have its influences. Gender role congruity theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002) emphasizes the difficulties women face in gaining legitimacy in traditionally masculine fields such as entrepreneurship (Ahl, 2006; Bruni, Gherardi & Poggio, 2004; Gupta et al., 2009). This theory explains (1) attitudes about the proper social roles of men and women, and (2) gender stereotypes that show beliefs about the characteristics, attributes, and behaviors of men and women. Further, the theory contains

descriptive norms: the well-accepted norms about how men and women actually behave and injunctive norms: the well-accepted norms about how men and women should behave (Eagly

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& Karau, 2002). Men are expected to fulfil roles that are task oriented and include agentic characteristics that are ascribed more strongly to men such as independence, self-confidence, aggressiveness and leadership. Women, on the contrary, are expected to fulfil roles that are more relationships oriented and include communal characteristics that are ascribed more strongly to women such as helpfulness, sensitivity, supportiveness and gentleness (Eagly, 1987). In addition, the stereotypical characteristics concerning men and women in society affect the classification of several occupations as masculine or feminine that leads to influence people’s ambitions and tendencies toward such jobs (Cejka & Eagly, 1999). According to Heilman (1995) expectations and beliefs regarding the qualities, that men and women take with them to their work often prescribes the type of jobs that is considered suitable for them. This results in a situation in which the necessary characteristics for some jobs are defined in terms of gender, and those jobs become known as “men’s work or women’s work”. The traditional gender roles define men as the “breadwinner” and underscore leadership whereas women are assigned to the “caretaker” role and focus on family and relationships (Eagly & Karau, 2002). However, jobs that require power, prestige and authority in a society and characteristics that are important for the business world tend to be stereotyped as masculine (Marlow & Carter, 2004; Mirchandani, 1999) and are associated with higher status and

competence for men compared to women (Ridgeway, 2001, 2012, 2014; Ridgeway & Correll, 2004).

Regarding entrepreneurship, persistent differences between men and women’s entrepreneurial activity may also be related to gender characterization (Carter, Anderson, & Shaw, 2001; Greer & Greene, 2003; Marlow, 2002). Gupta et al. (2009) also state that many scholars who studied the relationship between gender and career choices assume that men and women’s preferences are a reflection of their knowledge about gender-related characteristics related to both the task (gender-role stereotypes) and their identification with masculine or

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feminine characteristics (gender identification). Hence, the stereotypically image of an entrepreneur is that of a person who is agentic, independent, competitive, risk tolerant and competent which are traits similar to the stereotype of a male (Thébaud, 2015). Similarly, entrepreneurship in western countries is seen as “male”, but also described as “lean, hungry, predatory and hostile” (Greer, 1999, p. 299) characteristics that are in line with an “alpha male” image of entrepreneurs and managers (Gupta & York, 2008). Even though

entrepreneurship is described as predominantly masculine and this perception prevails, many characteristics that are believed to be important to entrepreneurial success are also

traditionally feminine (Gupta et al., 2008) such as caring and building relationships with others that also imply good entrepreneurs (Bird & Brush, 2002). However, generally

speaking, people perceive a similarity between masculine and entrepreneurial characteristics because entrepreneurship is viewed as a male-dominated occupation. Moreover, the greater number and visibility of male entrepreneurs that both men and women are exposed to contribute to this perception (Fagenson & Marcus, 1991).

The dissemination of stereotypical images might be a reason why the perpetuation of gender differences in society remain (Davies, Spencer, & Steele, 2005). This dissemination occurs usually through mass media that often contain gender-stereotypical information which strengthen stereotypes and can affect individual choices (Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2002). Every day job advertisements appear in society and can be found anywhere from postings online to advertisements written in magazines and newspapers. This means that individuals are constantly exposed to these job advertisements. In particular, if start-up firms continue using many entrepreneurial words in their job advertisements, then they unintentionally signal these jobs are more suitable for male job seekers. The masculine wording might signal that there are many men in the entrepreneurial environment and might give women the impression that it is predominantly masculine. This makes it more difficult to overcome the stereotype of

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entrepreneurship as being a male-dominated occupation since gender stereotypes also affect men’s and women’s intentions to pursue entrepreneurship (Fagenson & Marcus, 1991; Gupta et al., 2008). This can be explained by stereotype activation theory (SAT) that proposes activating relevant stereotypes in a particular situation affects people’s responses (Gupta et al., 2008). Specifically, SAT presumes that subtle or implicit presentation of gender-stereotypical information results in people responding in stereotype-consistent ways or assimilation (Wheeler & Petty, 2001) whereas blatant or explicit presentation of the same information stimulates stereotype disconfirmation or reactance (Nguyen & Ryan, 2008). Gupta et al. (2008) found that men and women would confirm the gender stereotype about entrepreneurship when it was represented implicitly but disconfirm it when it was represented explicitly. The use of entrepreneurial wording in job advertisements is a form of subtle, implicit presentation of gender-stereotypical information because it is not directly stated that entrepreneurial jobs are more suitable for male job seekers but this is suggested in the

wording. Gaucher et al. (2011) also argue that subtle variations in the gendered wording used in job advertisements may influence people’s perception of jobs, in such a way that men and women will find jobs described in language that is aligned with their own gender most appealing because it signals they belong in that occupation. Therefore, entrepreneurial jobs may activate the male stereotype in job advertisements of start-up firms and influence potential job seekers responses in such a way that men would feel more and women would feel less attracted towards applying to these jobs.

To sum up, job advertisements of start-up firms that include agentic, entrepreneurial wording and thus show to be gendered signal that the job might be more suitable for men in comparison with women. Men identify much more with masculine characteristics and when they pursue entrepreneurship, they act according to their gender-role stereotype. Therefore, when women occupy non-traditional roles (such as entrepreneurs) they signal characteristics

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that are more “masculine” and because of the traditional gender roles that are embedded in society for such a long time, the legitimacy and credibility of these women is questioned (Ridgeway, 2001, 2012, 2014). Thus, women who decide to pursue entrepreneurship may be evaluated unfavorably because they tend to fail to comply with standards for their gender, i.e. the female-stereotypical, communal characteristics. In other words, they do not act in

accordance with the general stereotype about how women are and they violate the well-accepted norms about how women should behave.

On the other hand, women compared to men are seen as inferior on qualities that are required to succeed in the business world and the talents and skills they command are valued relatively less than man (Marlow, 2002). The qualifications including knowledge, skills and abilities needed for jobs are usually mentioned in job advertisements and signal to potential job seekers whether they feel capable for the job or not. Job advertisements created by start-up firms usually emphasize abilities such as being adaptable in a fast-paced environment and willing to take on responsibility under risk. Besides that, growth, competitiveness,

persuasiveness, having a forward-looking perspective, opportunity recognition and innovation are words that are often used in job advertisements of start-up firms as well and characterize entrepreneurship (Ahl, 2006; Gartner, 1990). Again, this might lead women to believe that these agentic, masculine characteristics do not apply to them as they identify more with communal, feminine characteristics and they feel less capable of becoming successful in an entrepreneurial, business environment. As a result, this may be a possible explanation of why women refrain from applying to jobs offered by start-up firms because eventually, people usually tend to apply to jobs for which they believe they are capable of than for ones for which they do not (Gaucher et al., 2011).

To conclude, entrepreneurship is generally seen as a gendered occupation and

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job advertisements signals a masculine working environment and conforms with the stereotype of entrepreneurship as masculine. Therefore, it is expected that male and female job seekers would interpret and respond differently to job advertisements. As the proportion of entrepreneurial words in job advertisements increases, men compared to women might feel more attracted to this job because it confirms the stereotype of entrepreneurship being

masculine and hence, they might be encouraged to apply to the job. This lead to the next hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2. The positive relationship between entrepreneurially worded job

advertisements and job appeal is moderated by gender, such that it is stronger for male than for female job seekers.

Figure 1 shows the direct, positive relationship between job advertisement wording and job appeal, which is moderated by gender. It is expected that when the proportion of entrepreneurial words in job advertisements increases, men compared to women feel more attracted to this job because it confirms the stereotype of entrepreneurship being masculine.

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DATA AND METHOD

This section outlines the empirical part of this study. First, the design and sample are presented. Subsequently, the material that was used for the experiment and the procedure are discussed. Then, the variables are described. Finally, a brief description of the data analysis approach is provided to test for the hypotheses. The complete survey can be found in Appendix A.

Design

The hypotheses in this study were tested using an experimental approach with a 2x2 between-subjects design with gender (male vs. female) and job advertisement wording (entrepreneurial wording in job advertisement version 1a and 2a vs. non-entrepreneurial wording in job advertisement version 1b and 2b). Respondents were randomly assigned to the conditions of the job advertisement and respondent’s gender was equally assigned to each cell. Note that for each condition an additional version of the job advertisement was created to mitigate the risk that respondents might discuss the experiment between them. All four job advertisement versions were randomized equally and can be found in Appendix B.

Sample

Data was collected from students that are currently studying for a Master or Bachelor degree in Business or Economics at universities in The Netherlands. Most students studied at the University of Amsterdam where the distribution of male (45%) and female (55%) master students studying at the faculty of Economics and Business study year ’15-‘16 is almost equal (University of Amsterdam, 2016). These respondents will soon be graduated and therefore start looking for jobs in the near future, which made this an appropriate sample for this particular experiment.

Potential respondents were contacted through e-mail and social media from which they received the link. In total 397 potential respondents received the link via e-mail and an

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unknown number of potential respondents received the link via social media. Therefore, it is not possible to determine an accurate response rate because the number of how many people responded to the link via social media is unknown. Regardless of the way through which potential respondents were contacted in total 186 respondents opened the link and 157 actually completed the survey. Furthermore, there was one question inserted into the survey that required a specific answer that was given in the question. This question was designed to detect whether respondents paid enough attention to instructions and to trap individuals who are speeding or cheating as they take the survey. Of these 157 respondents, some failed to answer this trap question correctly and for this reason were not taken into account in the analyses. Next, one respondent failed to provide demographic information and as it is of utmost importance to know the respondent’s gender this respondent was also not taken into consideration. Finally, the survey had set a timer when the page was submitted of which the respondents were not aware. This timer measured the time it took a respondent to read the job advertisement and subsequently answer the questions. As a result, respondents who spent less than three minutes or more than thirty minutes after submitting this page were excluded from the analyses as well. Of the responses that were useful for the analyses (n = 102), 41% was male and 59% was female. The sample was predominantly Dutch (65%), young (the average age was 24.6 years), and obtained or is currently enrolled for a Master’s degree in Business or Economics (75%). Important for the purpose of this study, 75% of the sample reported that they are currently looking for a job or expect to do so in the next six months. Moreover, respondents that reported not having a work intention in the near future (25%) or who studied for a Bachelor degree (25%) were no different on any relevant variables measured in this study from respondents who showed having a work intention and were studying for a Master’s degree.

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Materials

A dictionary of entrepreneurial words developed by Short, Broberg, Cogliser and Brigham (2009) was used as a starting point for the creation of a list of entrepreneurial words used in the entrepreneurial versions of the job advertisements. The dictionary of Short et al. (2009) contains 244 words capturing different dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation and is divided into six dimensions: autonomy, innovativeness, pro-activeness, competitive

aggressiveness, risk taking and additional inductively derived words. The words on this list

were compared with other scholars that describe entrepreneurship or provide descriptions of entrepreneurs (i.e. Ahl, 2006; Anderson & Warren, 2011; Frese & Gielnik, 2014; Gartner, 1988, 1990; Gupta et al., 2009; Hornaday & Aboud, 1971; Jaafar, Othman, & Jalali, 2014; Mathias, Williams, & Smith, 2015; Thébaud, 2015; Wolfe & Shepherd, 2015). Concerning the wording of the non-entrepreneurial advertisements, gender-fair language was taken into account. Gender-fair language (GFL) is used as an attempt to reduce stereotyping and discrimination in language (Fairclough, 2003; Maass, Suitner, & Merkel, 2013). There are various strategies that can be used to make language gender-fair and avoid negative effects of masculine generics: neutralization, feminization and a combination of the two (Sczesny, Formanowicz, & Moser, 2016). This study made use of these strategies and subsequently substituted entrepreneurial, masculine words with gender-neutral words for the job advertisements in the non-entrepreneurial condition.

In addition to the entrepreneurial word list, job advertisements posted by start-ups on websites such as www.workinstartups.com, www.venturefizz.com, www.ventureloop.com, and https://angel.co/were reviewed and used in order to produce a generic and realistic advertisement. The start-up websites present jobs to potential applicants in several job categories. Websites such as www.ventureloop.com and http://angel.co/ include over 35,000 jobs. Currently, start-ups are frequently looking for people in the following job categories:

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Software Engineering, Marketing, Sales and Web & Graphic Design. Further, Engineering Software has been shown to be a popular job category but is also highly associated with masculinity in society. For this reason, the decision was made not to advertise for the position of a “Software Engineer”. Instead, the position of a marketing associate was used because this is not stereotypically gendered as a typically male or female job. Concerning the intended sample of students, CEO and senior positions were left out of the possibilities to choose from. As a result, the decision was made to choose “Junior Marketing Manager” as a suitable position for the job advertisements.

In order to insure the validity of the job advertisements and the manipulated wording two Human Resources expert recruiters were asked to evaluate how realistic, believable, accurate, legal and appropriate the job advertisements were. Moreover, they were asked if the differences between the entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial versions were perceivable. According to both experts, the design and structure of the job advertisements match perfectly with regular job postings. One recruiter mentioned to include something about experience or level of education, this recommendation was taken into account when finalizing the job advertisements. This recruiter further explained: “The difference in “aggressiveness” between

both versions is clear. The entrepreneurial versions are more direct and aggressive in comparison with the less entrepreneurial versions who seem to be more “peaceful”. The advertisements give clearly direction about what the possibilities are. The “About us” section in version 1 is defined from a “you-perspective” whereas in version 2 there is a

“we-perspective”.” Another recruiter mentioned: “The structure is certainly realistic and recognizable in my field of expertise. Introduction, who are we, what are you going to do, what do we ask, contact. The AIDA principle is perfectly applied here. The differences

between the job advertisements are observable, the entrepreneurial version is float, energetic and written more challenging, it is also more direct and point-blank.” According to both

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recruiters, basically everyone who is business savvy will be interested in marketing jobs in a start-up environment and especially young people who are looking for a job where they can contribute and have responsibility in a dynamic environment.

Furthermore, the survey was pre-tested with an independent sample of students that are currently studying for a Bachelor degree of Business Administration in Hotel

Management at the University of Applied Sciences in Maastricht in The Netherlands.

Potential respondents were contacted through e-mail and in total 39 people received the link. Of this total, 27 respondents (15 male and 12 female) completed the survey (response rate = 69.2%). The sample was Dutch (100%) and young (the average age was 21.7 years). The responses provided were used to determine the quality of the experiment and to refine the survey questions. The primary goal of pre-testing the entire experiment was to ensure that all the survey items and directions were clear and easily understood. The procedure for the pre-test was similar to the main data collection phase. Based on the feedback received, the quantitative manipulation check question and the content of the job advertisements were revised. The quantitative manipulation during the pre-test was measured with four items (α .86) developed by Anderson, Kreiser, Kuratko, Hornsby and Eshima (2015). All items were measured with a Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). However, after careful consideration the decision was made to exclude these four items because of the length of the items that might distract respondents and could negatively influence other, more important items that were to be measured. In addition, these items measure the entrepreneurial orientation of a company while the manipulation in this specific experiment should be designed for verifying the job advertisement wording and the company and position reflected by it. Therefore, the quantitative manipulation check used during the main data collection phase was adjusted. Furthermore, there was one question added in the matrix in the main data collection phase that required a specific answer that was given in the

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question to detect whether respondents did pay enough attention to instructions. Finally, the content of the job advertisements were edited to strengthen the entrepreneurial signal as much as possible in the entrepreneurial job advertisements and to ensure the non-entrepreneurial job advertisements were realistic as well.

Procedure

In order to be able to participate in this study potential respondents were requested to go to a website for which the link was provided via e-mail or social media. The first page of the survey explained that the purpose of the study was to gain an understanding of the role that job advertisements play in employee recruitment. Respondents were required to read and electronically sign a consent form enduring that participation was voluntarily and data

collected will remain confidential. Also, respondents were informed about the approximate time it would take to go through the entire process and they were provided with contact information of the researcher in case of any questions. When respondents had given their consent, they were asked to read a job advertisement carefully and put themselves in the context of someone actually looking for a job. After viewing the job advertisement, respondents completed all measures. The web-based experiment was set up such that respondents could not proceed without answering a question to ensure completion of the experiment that resulted in having no missing values. Finally, a debrief was provided in which respondents were thanked for their participation and more information about the research and its purpose was presented.

Measures

First Quantitative Manipulation Check of Job Advertisement Wording: the perception

of the job advertisement was measured with a single item, each respondent had to rate how entrepreneurial the job advertisement and the job/company it represented is on a Likert scale

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from not at all entrepreneurial (0) to extremely entrepreneurial (10). Thus, higher scores indicate the job advertisement is rated as more entrepreneurial.

Second Qualitative Manipulation Check of Job Advertisement Wording: the perception

of the job advertisement was measured with an open question in which respondents were asked which factors had affected their perception of the job advertisement and the job/company it represented. This question was adapted from Gaucher et al. (2011).

Perception of Job Appeal was measured with six items adapted from Gaucher et al.

(2011) on a Likert scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7). A sample item include “This job is appealing” (α .92).

Gender, participants were asked to indicate their gender either male or female. This

variable is used as a moderator and therefore mentioned separately here.

Covariates. Respondents were asked for demographic information purposes including

the respondent’s age, nationality, level of education, specialization and work intention. Further, results of the current study are controlled for two other control variables. First, respondents were asked if they ever had had entrepreneurial experience. Respondents who started their own business or were part of a founding team in a new venture might show more job appeal because they are already familiar with the start-up environment and therefore might find these entrepreneurial job advertisements more exciting. Second, respondents were asked whether one or both of their parents had been entrepreneurs. This is based on the idea that entrepreneurial intentions are transmitted within families and evidence of a positive relation that was found between parents’ entrepreneurial status and the likelihood that their children will become entrepreneurs later in life (Laspita, Breugst, Heblich, & Patzelt, 2011). Thus, respondents with entrepreneurial parents might be more attracted towards

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RESULTS

This section starts with a preliminary analysis that includes recoding counter-indicative items, computing reliabilities, computing scale means, checking normality and eventually presenting correlation analyses that show the relationships between the variables. Subsequently, manipulation checks of the independent variable Job Advertisement Wording are carried out. Next, the first hypothesis is tested with an independent-samples t-test to investigate whether the proportion of entrepreneurial wording in job advertisements positively affects job seekers’ appeal for that job. The second hypothesis is tested with a factorial

ANOVA as well as with the PROCESS macro of Hayes (2012) to compare the main effects of gender and job advertisement wording and the interaction effect between gender and job advertisement wording on job appeal.

Preliminary Analyses

The data collected is analyzed with the software program IBM SPSS version Statistics 23. First, reliability for Job Appeal (6 items) was computed and displayed in the correlation matrix. It can be concluded that the scale shows high reliability (.90) and thus is much higher than the threshold value of .70, which means the scale provides consistent findings. Further, all corrected item-total correlations demonstrate that all items have a good correlation with the total score of the scale (all above .30). Finally, none of the items of this variable would

substantially influence reliability if they were deleted.

Then, the scale mean was computed for the variable and checked for normality by looking at kurtosis and skewness as well as the boxplot that was screened to identify outliers and extreme cases. Both the values of kurtosis and skewness lie between -1 and +1.

Therefore, the data in this sample comes from a normally distributed population. Further, there were no extreme cases found in the boxplot. Finally, descriptives and correlations between the variables are reported in Table 1. It can be concluded that there is a tendency to a

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positive correlation between Job Advertisement Wording and Job Appeal (r = .22, p < .05) and no correlation between Gender and Job Appeal (r = .06).

Table 1

Descriptives and Correlations

N M SD 1 2 3

1. Entrepreneurial Job Advertisement 46 .50 .51 -

2. Gender 46 1.61 .49 -.27 -

3. Job Appeal 46 5.03 1.01 -.20 -.08 (.91)

1. Non-Entrepreneurial Job Advertisement 56 2.54 .50 -

2. Gender 56 1.57 .50 .13 -

3. Job Appeal 56 4.52 1.19 -.08 .14 (.89)

1. Job Advertisement Wording 102 .45 .50 -

2. Gender 102 1.59 .50 .22* -

3. Job Appeal 102 4.75 1.14 .04 .06 (.90)

Note. Cronbach’s alpha is on the diagonal; * p < .05

First Quantitative Manipulation Check

Before the hypotheses are ready to be tested, a quantitative manipulation check of job advertisement wording is done first. One one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted with the manipulation check as the dependent variable and job advertisements (version 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b) as the independent variable. In total, three contrasts were used that made a comparison between all versions (contrast 1), between the entrepreneurial versions (contrast 2) and between the non-entrepreneurial versions (contrast 3). A Levene’s test verified the equality of variances in the sample (p > .05) and thus the groups demonstrated having equal variance. The means were compared for respondents in the entrepreneurial condition versus those in the non-entrepreneurial condition and can be found in Table 2. Those respondents in the entrepreneurial condition (M=8.7, SD=.29) rated the job

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SD=.28). Results in Table 3 indicate that there is a statistically significant effect of job advertisement wording on level of being perceived as entrepreneurial F (3, 98) = 15.476, p < .05. Also, results from SLD post-hoc tests that are presented in Table 4 reveal that the entrepreneurial job advertisements are significantly rated higher compared to the non-entrepreneurial job advertisements (p = .000). However, results also show that there is a significant difference between the two versions of the non-entrepreneurial job advertisements (p = .003) while the two versions of the entrepreneurial job advertisements are not

significantly different from one another (p = .444). Despite the fact that there is a significant difference between the two versions of the non-entrepreneurial job advertisements, the decision was made to retain the original grouping of the conditions and thus continue doing further analyses with two instead of four versions of job advertisements. Since it is of much more importance to gain a significant effect in contrast 1 then to gain a non-significant effect in contrast 2 and 3. Eventually the purpose of this analysis is to establish a significant

difference between the entrepreneurially worded and non-entrepreneurially worded job advertisements and as the results indicate this purpose has been achieved.

Table 2

Descriptives one-way ANOVA

Mean SD N

Job advertisement entrepreneurial 1a 8.52 .29 23

Job advertisement entrepreneurial 2a 8.87 .29 23

Job advertisement non-entrepreneurial 1b 7.54 .27 26 Job advertisement non-entrepreneurial 2b 6.27 .33 30

26 Table 3 one-way ANOVA SS Df MS F sig. Job advertisement 109.285 3 36.428 15.476 .000 Error 230.676 98 2.354 Total 339.961 101

Note. Significant at the p < .05 level

Table 4

Contrast

Contrast Value of contrast s.e. T df sig.

1 -3.59 .611 -5.87 98 .000

2 .35 .452 .77 98 .444

3 -1.27 .411 -3.09 98 .003

Note. Significant at the p < .05 level

Second Qualitative Manipulation Check

For a second qualitative manipulation check, respondents were asked which factors had affected their perception of the job advertisement and the job and company it represented. This question was asked to verify if any respondents would notice the purpose of the wording in the job advertisements. Respondents in both conditions mentioned that factors such as having autonomy, responsibility, a personal impact, flexibility and freedom affected their perception. Further, few respondents mentioned the qualifications appealed to them while others pointed out they were affected by the way the job advertisement was presented. Specifically, according to respondents in the entrepreneurial condition, the job advertisement had a positive vibe and was challenging, motivating, fascinating, interesting and stimulating. The innovative, forward-looking, dynamic, entrepreneurial environment aspects the start-up described itself being in also contributed to their perception. On the contrary, some

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general description and no specific explanation about the company that was uninspiring to them. However, as for the manipulation check, there were four respondents in the

entrepreneurial condition and three respondents in the non-entrepreneurial condition who explicitly mentioned their perception was affected by the way the text of the job

advertisements was formulated and they referred to the use of words, sentences, adjectives and language. Therefore, it can be concluded that the qualitative manipulation check worked as intended because more than 90% of the sample did not notice and indeed mentioned nothing about the job advertisement wording in both conditions.

Hypotheses Testing

Independent-samples t-test

An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the perception of job appeal in entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial job advertisements conditions. A Levene’s test verified the equality of variances in the sample (p > .05) and thus the groups demonstrated having equal variance. As Table 5 demonstrates there was a difference in the scores for entrepreneurial job advertisement (M=5.03, SD=1.01) and non-entrepreneurial job

advertisement (M=4.52, SD=1.19) conditions on job appeal and Table 6 shows this difference was significant t(100)=-2.30, p = .024. These results suggest that job advertisement wording does have an effect on the perception of job appeal. Specifically, the results indicate that when the job advertisement consists of more entrepreneurial words the perception of job appeal is higher and thus provide support for hypothesis 1.

Table 5

Descriptives Independent-samples t-test

Mean SD N

Entrepreneurial job advertisement wording 5.03 1.01 46

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Table 6

Independent-samples t-test

T Df sig.

Equal variances assumed -2.30 100 .020

Note. Significant at the p < .05 level

Factorial ANOVA

A factorial ANOVA was conducted to compare the main effects of gender and job advertisements wording and the interaction effect between gender and job advertisement wording on job appeal. Both independent variables consisted of two levels, for gender either male or female and for job advertisement wording either entrepreneurial or

non-entrepreneurial wording. As Table 7 shows there was no significant main effect of gender on perception of job appeal F(1, 98) = .13, p = .72, η² = .00. Furthermore, as expected from results of hypothesis 1, there was a significant main effect of job advertisement wording on perception of job appeal F(1, 98) = 5.90, p < .05, η² = .06. Finally, there was a non-significant interaction effect between gender and job advertisement wording on the perception of job appeal F(1, 98) = 1.13, p = .29, η² = .01.

Table 7

Factorial ANOVA

SS df MS F sig. η²

Gender .16 1 .16 .13 .72 .00

Job Advertisement Wording 7.35 1 7.35 5.90 .02 .06

Gender * Job Advertisement

Wording 1.41 1 1.41 1.13 .29 .01

Error 121.98 98 1.25

Total 2434.75 102

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Moderation Effects

In addition to the factorial ANOVA, the Process macro by Hayes (2012) for SPSS was used to examine if there was a moderation effect of gender on the relationship between job advertisement wording and job appeal. Table 8 shows the regression coefficient for job advertisement wording and gender of -0.59 and is not statistically different from zero t (96) = -1.29, p = .20. Thus, the effect of job advertisement wording on job appeal does not depend on one’s gender. In other words, there is no interaction. However, a closer inspection of the conditional effects in Table 9 reveals that the relationship between job advertisement wording and job appeal is only significant with the group of males (effect = .85, SE = .35, CI: .16 to 1.55) compared to the group of females (effect = .26, SE = .29, CI: -.32 to .84). This provides partial support for hypothesis 2 that the relationship between job advertisement wording and job appeal is indeed stronger for male job seekers.

Table 8

Moderation Model

Coeff. SE t p

Intercept i1 4.31 .62 6.99 .00

Job advertisement wording (X) b1 1.44 .76 1.90 .06

Gender (M) b2 .49 .32 1.52 .13

Job advertisement wording * gender (XM) b3 -.59 .46 -1.29 .20

Entrepreneurial Experience -.38 .27 -1.41 .16

Entrepreneurial Parents .06 .10 .58 .56

R2 = .086

F (5,96) = 1.8074, p = .119

Note. Significant at the p < .05 level

Table 9

Moderation Conditional Effect

unstandardized boot effects boot SE

boot LLCI

boot ULCI Conditional effect at levels of

gender

Male .85 .35 .16 1.55

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DISCUSSION

In this study the impact of job advertisement wording on men’s and women’s job appeal and factors that can encourage or impede job appeal in start-up firms for female job seekers were examined. Hereafter, the findings are discussed as well as implications of these findings with respect to the literature and practice. Furthermore, the limitations and a number of suggestions for future research are presented.

Theoretical and Practical Implications

Because differences in men and women’s entrepreneurial activities across the world persist (Gupta et al., 2009), it is important to understand why fewer women, compared with men, pursue a career in entrepreneurship. It is likely that job advertisements that include masculine, entrepreneurial words are written without people’s awareness of signaling an entrepreneurial, male environment. Nevertheless, according to Gaucher et al. (2011) this contributes to the division of traditional gender roles by deterring women’s interest in jobs that are masculine worded. Therefore, the present study was designed to explore the impact of entrepreneurially worded job advertisements on job seekers’ appeal to these jobs. Specifically, I hypothesized and found that the wording of job advertisements influences job appeal of job seekers. Men and women’s job appeal depends on the proportion of entrepreneurial words in job advertisements. Thus, regardless of gender, and as expected, respondents showed more job appeal towards entrepreneurial job advertisements than towards non-entrepreneurial job advertisements. In general, if job seekers do not feel job advertisements appeal to them then they most likely do not have the intention to apply. For start-up firms with growth and development intentions it is especially important that potential job seekers can identify with entrepreneurship. As such, these results contribute to the knowledge of wording in job advertisements (Gaucher et al., 2011) by showing it in an entrepreneurial context. Similar to the gendered wording in job advertisements of Gaucher et al. (2011) this study attempted to use entrepreneurial words as subtle mechanism of gender-stereotypical information indirectly

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implying that entrepreneurial jobs attract more men. Therefore, I hypothesized that the relationship between entrepreneurially worded job advertisements and job appeal would be stronger for male than for female job seekers. I found that, job advertisement wording had the strongest effect on job appeal for men. Specifically, the job appeal of male respondents was stronger for entrepreneurial job advertisements as opposed to non-entrepreneurial job advertisements. In addition, male compared to female respondents showed having more job appeal towards entrepreneurial job advertisements. Therefore, it can be concluded that male respondents responded more strongly towards job appeal of entrepreneurial job

advertisements than female respondents. Moreover, although female respondents also showed more job appeal for entrepreneurial job advertisements, this finding lies close to the job appeal of entrepreneurial job advertisement meaning that women find

non-entrepreneurial job advertisements also attractive. Eventually, female respondents found the non-entrepreneurial job advertisements more attractive than male respondents did. Thus, it can be concluded that job advertisement wording makes a difference on job appeal and that this difference is not equally important for both genders. As such, these results are in

accordance with the idea of gender role congruity theory and stereotype activation that argue that male job seekers are more attracted to job advertisements that conform to their stereotype. This is line with Gupta et al. (2009) who found that men and women’s entrepreneurial

intentions are strongly affected by gender stereotypes in contemporary society and show that men and women’s entry into entrepreneurship may be enhanced or limited by their perceived similarity of masculine characteristics. In addition, the extent to which one identifies with entrepreneurial characteristics positively affects intentions to pursue a career in

entrepreneurship.

Every year, or actually every day, new start-up firms are launched worldwide. Some people start new firms because they see a unique opportunity in the market and they want to

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take advantage of it while other people cannot find suitable work and start a business to survive. Whatever the reason of starting a company might be, as start-up firms grow they need more people to do the work.Researchers argue that businesses should have an important effect on the economy in terms of jobs, sales and innovation and that the presence of women in entrepreneurship is important for economic growth (Ahl, 2006). Because of these reasons, it is of utmost importance to attract both genders and therefore, the wording in job

advertisements is essential to take into consideration because it can attract and deter potential job applicants.Both male and female job seekers should feel attracted to entrepreneurial jobs and get the impression that for the start-up firm, job and environment it does not matter whether one is male or female. If more women feel attracted to start working in

entrepreneurial environments, the diversity will increase, the environment will become less masculine because of a higher number of women and subsequently it will become more inclusive as well. Such environments improve workplace harmony and productivity (Sabharwal, 2014) and thus it is valuable for start-up firms when it comes to employee recruitment to think about the value of attracting more women or at least an equal amount of potential job seekers in terms of gender. However, what is important to remember is that if the wording of job advertisements is going to be taken into account in the future, it should be done carefully as on one hand, the objective is to attract more female applicants, while on the other hand, male applicants should also still feel attracted to these jobs. In other words, the aim should be to increase women’s intentions without reducing men’s intentions (Gupta et al., 2008). In addition, Gupta et al. (2008) argue that if one believes that entrepreneurship should be equally appealing to men as well as women, the emphasis must be on presenting

entrepreneurship as gender neutral. On one hand, if the use of entrepreneurial words in job advertisements is diminished in order to make it sound more gender-neutral, this could mean that female job seekers feel more attracted towards entrepreneurial jobs. This might be a good idea for start-up firms who want to attract more female applicants. Start-up firms may benefit

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when the use of entrepreneurial wording is diminished and transformed to gender-neutral wording as then both genders would be able to identify with such characteristics. Similar logic can be applied to other recruitment sources such as websites or mission statements of start-up firms.

Limitations and Future Directions

The results of this study should be interpreted within the context of the study’s limitations and suggest a number of directions for further research. First, although the nature of two measurements for a manipulation check contribute to the strength of an experiment, this is only considered a strength if both measurements work properly. However, in this study the manipulation did not completely work as intended as proven by results of the quantitative manipulation check that shows that the difference between two non-entrepreneurial job advertisements was significant which should not have been the case. Further, some respondents mentioned that the wording of the job advertisements had influenced their perception of the job and the company it represented. This means that although only 10% of the sample noticed this manipulation, the wording did not act as a subtle, implicit mechanism. Therefore, this result makes the effect of two measurements less strong than when both measurements would have worked properly.

Second, the level of realism of the experiment limits the ability to generalize the findings of this study. This is because the created job advertisements contained higher

amounts of entrepreneurial words for the purpose of the experimental manipulation. However, real world job advertisements of start-up firms would most likely contain less entrepreneurial words. In addition, the strong manipulations that exaggerated the use of entrepreneurial words were necessary because respondents had only read one job advertisement. Actual job seekers scan and read perhaps hundreds of job advertisements and therefore, the amount of

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advertisement or a less strong bias across 100 job advertisements. Having said that, future research could explore the boundary conditions of entrepreneurial wording effects and establish the smallest amount of entrepreneurial wording necessary to influence female job seekers.

Third, the list of entrepreneurial words used in the current study was based on a dictionary of Short et al. (2009) related to entrepreneurial orientation and compared with descriptions of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship by other researchers. The list of non-entrepreneurial words on the contrary, could have been validated better. Therefore, future research is encouraged to develop a list with entrepreneurial words and search for words that sound less entrepreneurial but do not change in their meaning. This does not imply that the list of non-entrepreneurial words is per definition feminine, but rather a mixture of feminine and gender-neutral words. Eventually, male as well as female experts in the field of

entrepreneurship should validate this list.

Fourth, this study measured the perception of job appeal and did not measure actual behavior such as job pursuit or job acceptance intentions. For future research, it would be interesting to explore to what extent potential job seekers have intentions to apply for the job that is being advertised in the job advertisement. Moreover, thereby asking to what extent individuals would find this job and firm to be suitable for men, women or both.

Fifth, this study made use of a sample that consisted of business students that were about the same age, had a similar educational background and expected to look for jobs in the near future. The sample was almost equally divided in terms of gender and the majority shared the same nationality. This means that the sample is representative for the population of all Bachelor and Master business students, at least in The Netherlands. However, this study found that female respondents felt more attracted to entrepreneurial in comparison with non-entrepreneurial job advertisements although this relation was weaker than for male

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respondents. This could be due to another limitation of the sample, which was the educational background of some female respondents. As some women were studying for entrepreneurship and innovation, they might not feel deterred from entrepreneurially worded job

advertisements but instead feel encouraged because it is in line with what they are studying. As a result, future research could undertake this with a different sample than that of students used in this study. The student sample was relevant in this case, because most students do not currently have a job and once they will be graduated, they will be anticipating applying for one in the near future. Nevertheless, there is reason to assume that students interpret and respond to job advertisements in a different way than actual potential job seekers with job experience. It is possible that potential job seekers who already work in established firms for years but have become jaded want to try out something completely new for their next job. Then, job advertisements using entrepreneurial words that sound exciting, promising and fascinating can create arousal among people and signal the start-up firm is a great place to work. Thus, it could be interesting for further research to explore how potential job seekers with work experience respond to entrepreneurial job advertisements.

CONCLUSION

This study built on the well-documented stereotype of entrepreneurship as masculine (Gupta et al., 2009) and the resulting overlap between words describing masculine traits and words describing entrepreneurial traits (Gupta et al., 2009) and specifically tried to gain a deeper understanding of the effect of entrepreneurially worded job advertisements on job seekers appeal. This study contributed to existing research about job advertisement wording and job appeal and was the first study that took an entrepreneurial view by using

entrepreneurially and non-entrepreneurially words in recruitment materials. Also, this study argued that by using gender-neutral language in job advertisements, gender stereotypes of entrepreneurship as being a male-dominated occupation could change which may result in an

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increase of women’s intentions to pursue entrepreneurship. In this study, female respondents were not deterred by entrepreneurially worded job advertisements although they did not feel attracted to these job advertisements as much as male job seekers did. A possible explanation could be that women compared with men do not identify as much with entrepreneurial words that is equivalent to masculine words and thus a stereotype of a male.

Overall, it can be concluded that job advertisement wording makes a difference on job appeal and this difference is not equally important for both genders. Therefore, it is valuable for start-up firms when it comes to employee recruitment to think about the value of attracting more women because the presence of women in entrepreneurship is important for economic growth (Ahl, 2006). However, what is important to remember is that when it comes to the use of wording in job advertisements of start-up firms the aim should be to increase women’s intentions without reducing men’s intentions (Gupta et al., 2008).

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