Comparing the performance of male‐ and female‐controlled businesses

Many policy makers and practitioners view female entrepreneurs as a “special group” worthy of research and policy attention. Concern has, however, been raised surrounding the quality of the studies focusing on female entrepreneurs. The six specification decisions (i.e. purpose, theoretical perspective, focus, level of analysis, methodology, and time frame) highlighted by Low and MacMillan’s 1998 article, “Entrepreneurship: past research and future challenges”, to review the entrepreneurship field were utilized to guide a critical review of Watson’s 2002 study, “Comparing the performance of male – and female – controlled businesses: relating outputs to inputs”, relating to the performance of male and female‐controlled businesses. Watson’s insightful study makes several contributions to knowledge and highlights issues that need to be more rigorously considered by scholars focusing on the female entrepreneurship phenomenon. Scholars who consider and report the six specification decisions will provide richer evidence and they will enable studies to be more easily compared with one another. Further, more rigorously collected evidence will enable policy makers and practitioners to make more informed resource allocation decisions.