Article on Women's Entrepreneurship Wins Best Paper Award at Academy of Management Journal

An article by researchers from the Department of Information Systems at the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas and collaborators from Hong Kong and France published in the Academy of Management Journal was named the best paper of the year published in the journal. The article focuses on the economic challenges facing women in rural India and examines how women's entrepreneurship can be promoted in rural India that in turn promotes greater empowerment of women.

Authors on the research are Viswanath Venkatesh, distinguished professor and George & Boyce Billingsley Endowed Chair in Information Systems; Tracy Ann Sykes, associate professor; and Mary Macharia, a doctoral student at the Walton College Department of Information Systems; along with collaborators from Hong Kong and France.

Their article is entitled "Networks, Technology, and Entrepreneurship: A Field Quasi-experiment among Women in Rural India." The article's abstract says the researchers considered "the interplay of women's social networks (ties to family, to community, and to men in power), information and communication technology (ICT) use, and time in relating to the initiation and success of women's entrepreneurial ventures."

The article and its conclusions resulted from a seven-year study in 20 rural villages in India, Venkatesh said. Venkatesh is the No. 1 cited researcher at the University of Arkansas according to stats from Google Scholar, with his articles cited about 83,000 times. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential scholars in business.