A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Thomas Köllen, Regine Bendl and Sabine Steinbacher
aim of this paper is to understand in more detail the importance of the LGBT community and its role
for entrepreneurial behavior and success, and to study community-based relations of homosexual
entrepreneurs and the communities’ influences. In the following pages, based on data from a
quantitative survey that was conducted among gay and lesbian entrepreneurs in Austria in 2011,
firstly, we develop a theoretical framing based on a “community as solidarity” approach, which tries to
sketch the community relations of homosexual entrepreneurs. This is an important contribution, given
the fact that this topic has received scant attention so far. Secondly, we hypothesize interrelations of
entrepreneurs’ experienced workplace discrimination in their former jobs, their anticipation of
customers’ reaction in the case of knowing about the entrepreneur’s homosexuality, the
entrepreneurs’ perception of the commercial significance and personal relatedness as well as
commercial relatedness to the LGBT community. Thirdly, we present the applied method, data and
findings. Finally, we end our paper by referring to the limitations of the study, future research
perspectives and implications for organizational and political practices.
2. The LGBT community
When speaking about the LGBT community, two concepts have to be clarified first: the concept of
“LGBT” and the concept of “communities”. “LGBT” (or “LGBTI”) is the abbreviation for “lesbians, gays,
bisexuals and transsexuals” (with the addition of intersexuals, if adding an I). In diversity research and
practice LGBT(I) is often the label for the marginalized group in terms of the diversity dimension of
sexual orientation. A narrower use of the term “sexual orientation” relates more to sexuality and
focuses on gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals. Both approaches to “sexual orientation” usually
exclude heterosexuality. Transsexuality and intersexuality are not directly linked to sexuality or sexual
preferences (Dietert & Dentice, 2009) and an attempt to verbally include these phenomena into that
diversity dimension is to label the dimension as “sexual identity”. It is gays and lesbians who are most
frequently discussed in papers of this nature, and for whom, to date, most provision has been made in
diversity management within companies. This focus on gays and lesbians is one that this paper
retains. However, the term LGBT as retained in this paper will not exclude bisexual and transsexual
entrepreneurs from our considerations. Nevertheless, the question remains as to what LGBT(I)
entrepreneurs have in common, and how this commonality can affect their entrepreneurial behavior.
As an approach to this question the concept of “community” comes into play.
As a theoretical framework this paper refers to the approach of “community as solidarity”
(Bhattacharyya 2004) that provides its members with social capital resources (Bourdieau 1983).
Generally, communities need a fundamental and constitutive shared similarity. This communality can
be a common regional or national origin or location, but can also be a shared experience. Based on
Tönnies` “Gesellschaft” (Tönnies 1878), communities generate solidarity among their members that is
“based upon shared interests or circumstances” (Bhattacharyya 2004: 11). These shared
circumstances for LGBT entrepreneurs are shared experiences of societal marginalization, and the
consequent solidarity “implies a willingness to engage in collective effort to create and sustain a
caring society” (Swinney 2008: 366). Based on that solidarity, communities can be seen as support
infrastructures (Emery et al 2004). The fact that communities, at least to a certain degree, have
shared values or behavioral patterns provides entrepreneurs, who belong to those communities, with
knowledge about the communities’ views and preferences (Anderson et al 2007). Besides the status
of being a part of that solidarity group, this can be an additional advantage for doing business with
community members.
Although the LGBT community can theoretically be framed by the concept of solidarity, not every
homosexual entrepreneur has perceived, or anticipates, discrimination based on his or her sexuality
in the same way. Thus for gays and lesbians, the shared experience of being marginalized differs in
its intensity and mode of prevalence, and it can be assumed that it affects the different layers of the
individual’s community relatedness and solidarity. Furthermore, the anticipation of the negative
economic consequences of being identified as a homosexual entrepreneur diverges, and besides
personal, biographic characteristics depends on individual societal climate perceptions. The
anticipation of consequences may also affect the individual choice of the subject the business is
based on. Formalizing these assumptions, five hypotheses are formulated that are summarized in
figure 1.
H1: The experience of prejudices and discrimination in a former job is strongly related to the choice of
a sector of self-employment that is assumed to be accepted for homosexual entrepreneurs.
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