Contextualizing the career success of Arab women entrepreneurs

ABSTRACTDrawing on institutional theory, this study gives voice to Arab women entrepreneurs. Through contextualization and in-depth, semi-structured interviews, I examine Lebanese women entrepreneurs’ conceptualizations of career success, the mechanisms they use to realize it and their overall awareness of it. According to the findings, the entrepreneurs experience career success as an act of disobedience against socially imposed cultural and gender mandates. Furthermore, career success evolves as a contextual, dynamic process that is culturally dependent but individually negotiated, interpreted and constructed using external and internal conceptualizations. In turn, these conceptualizations are intertwined with agency and unfold as a process at the intersection of gender, patriarchy and cultural values. Accordingly, I argue against reducing career success to static, objective and subjective criteria. Doing so undermines the complexity and processual nature of the construct and neglects the importance of ...