A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Thomas Köllen, Regine Bendl and Sabine Steinbacher
H2: The perception of a more negative climate for gay and lesbian entrepreneurs is negatively related
to an individual’s assumption about the consequences of customers potentially finding out about the
individual’s homosexuality.
H3: The anticipation of customers’ negative reactions in the case of finding out about the
entrepreneur’s homosexuality is related to a higher degree of commercial relatedness to the LGBT
community, to a higher degree of commercial significance that the community has for the
entrepreneur’s business success, and to a general higher personal relatedness to the community.
H4: The choice of a sector of self-employment in which it is assumed to be accepted to work as a
homosexual entrepreneur is positively related to a stronger personal and commercial relatedness to
the LGB community, as well as to the higher significance the community has for the entrepreneur’s
business success.
H5: The more positive the anticipation of the customers’ reactions in the case of finding out about the
entrepreneur’s homosexuality is, the more likely it is that the entrepreneur locates his or her business
in an LGB district of his or her town.
These hypotheses are visualized in figure 1:
Figure 1: Community interdependency model for homosexual entrepreneurs
3. Methods
We tested our hypotheses in the context of homosexual entrepreneurs in Austria with quantitative
data from a survey conducted in 2011. Below, we describe our data and sample and we present our
findings.
3.1 Sample and data
The participants of the survey, who were self-employed and identified themselves either as lesbian or
gay were recruited in several ways. First of all, an invitation for participation in the survey was
distributed via a “mainstream” newsletter of the Austrian chamber of commerce, of which every selfemployed
entrepreneur is obliged to be a member. Secondly, the self-employed gays and lesbians
were invited to participate through advertising on different Austrian lesbian and gay web-pages and
newsletters. Thirdly, flyers asking for participation were distributed manually to numerous lesbian and
gay bars, cafes and shops. No matter how they were recruited, the participants were informed that
they could click on an internet link which directly led them to the online questionnaire of the survey.
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