With women reaching record levels in business leadership and in graduate school enrollment, understanding how women fair in business and family is of interest to many involved in shaping the business environment. I have always had an interest in ways to improve business practices to support the unique needs of women who must balance family and career responsibilities and be effective in both worlds.
I have three co-researchers from ACU, one a previous grad student, another colleague in COBA, and a colleague in Manila, who also have an interest in this area:
The following paper was co-authored with Jozell Brister and presented at the 2012 Christian Scholars conference at Lipscomb University in Nashville:
Conference Paper: Restoring Public Trust through Women in their Natural Role as Manager and Entrepreneur, Christian Scholars Conference, June 2012, Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN, with Jozell Brister.
This paper presents an empirical examination of the position that women as business leaders with proper access to global resources can better lead us out of the financial “trust” crisis. We discuss an economic anomaly of natural design where women create the balance for business to become both a “force for good and an engine for profit.”
The following paper was co-authored with Jess Weeden, a recent graduate student from Georgia, and also presented at the 2012 Christian Scholars conference at Lipscomb University in Nashville:
Conference Paper: Socioemotional Wealth’s Influence on Business Success. Christian Scholars Conference, June 2012, Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN, with Jess Weeden.
In this paper, I worked with Jess, who was my research assistant in this effort, and, at the time, a sophomore in the Department of Psychology at ACU. In this research, we identified measures of Socioemotional wealth as driving factors for economic and social (family) stability as enabled by business policy. Survey methods and exploratory factor analysis was used to advance Socioemotional wealth to include measures of financial, ethical, spiritual, and social obligation.
Jess presented two different versions of work in progress in developing this paper at the Undergraduate Research Festivals in 2011 and 2012. This work was also supported by an Undergraduate Research award the summer of 2011 where I worked with Jennifer Watson, a junior in Social Work, to develop the social constructs in this paper.
Both of these conference presentations were used to develop the full papers that were submitted to journals for review. At the Academy of Management conference, Jess approached the editor of the Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion (JMSR) who was very interested in her work and asked if she would be interested in entering a theme competition that was being held in France at the 2013 International MSR conference. Jess graduated soon after this invitation and completed a graduate program at the University of Georgia. We continued to collaborate and developed the followed paper that was submitted to JMSR and is currently being revised.
Research Paper: A Mixed Methods Approach to Recognizing the Spiritual Identity of Women as Managers and Entrepreneurs, with J. Brister, B. Teehankee, and J. Weeden, prepared for Management Research Review, December 2017, under revision.
We took the opportunity to extend this work by using a different research approach to capture the element of spirituality in women entrepreneurs. In this work, we separate the concept of mindfulness from spirituality, applying the necessary but not sufficient theory to emphasize the importance of spirituality in decision making. We use a Critical Realist approach to make this distinction. Jozell, Ben, and I interviewed April Anthony to better understand the impact of spirituality in women as leaders. This paper, as listed below, is under development for submission to JMSR.
Research Paper: Spirituality, mindfulness and entrepreneurship: A critical realist analysis, with J. Brister, B. Teehankee, and K. Saini. Prepared for Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion, August 2018.
Finally, during the summer of 2018, I spent time in New Orleans to review historical documents and conduct interviews with Sue Jane Smock, a renown artist with works at the Smithsonian and in galleries across the country. Sue Jane has an interesting story as one of the few successful African American artists who has historical ties to a number organizations that have contributed widely to the arts and aided the growth and development of African American culture and entrepreneurship in New Orleans. This research contributes to my research on the composition of networks in social and business settings. See related research submitted to the Christian Scholars Conferences in 2017 and 2018.