A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Thomas Köllen, Regine Bendl and Sabine Steinbacher
The online questionnaire was open from April to August 2011. 90 gay and lesbian entrepreneurs filled
out at least the first two pages of the online questionnaire, and 68 of them completed it.
As mentioned above, the participants of the survey (N=90) were self-employed and identified
themselves as either gay (64.4%) or lesbian (35.6%). About 41.1% of the participants were running a
one-man or one-woman business (sole-proprietors), and 18.9% of the firms were limited companies
(GmbH). 60.3% of the entrepreneurs do not have any other incomes beside their business. 66.6% of
the respondents are running their business alone, and 13.5% work together with their partner or
former partner. Almost half of the participants were between the age of 36 and 45, 16% between 26
and 35, and 28% were between 46 and 55. Only 7% of the entrepreneurs were older than 56 years.
As areas of business, consulting (30%) and advertizing/marketing (23%) are predominant. 10%
belong to the category of “business services” and the rest of the entrepreneurs are distributed among
other sectors. The sample mainly consists of Austrians (88.2%) without any background of migration:
85.3% of the respondents have an Austrian mother, 83.8% have an Austrian father, and 88.2% spent
at least the major part of their school-time in Austria. The entrepreneurs have a high level of
education, 61.8% have a university degree und another 19.1% have finished high school (Matura).
3.2 Measures
Sexual orientation: Participants were asked to identify their sexual orientation with the question: “How
would you describe your sexual orientation?”, with the response choices of “lesbian/gay”, “more
lesbian/more gay”, “bisexual”, and “heterosexual”. For the analysis “more lesbian/more gay” and
“lesbian/gay” were taken together.
Experienced discrimination (ED) in one or more former jobs as motivator for self-employment was
assessed with the item “How important have been the following reasons for your decision to get self
employed?: I got self employed because of prejudices and discriminations in my former job”. The fourpoint
response scale ranged from 1=very important to 4= not important at all.
The anticipated customers’ reactions (ACR) on finding out about the entrepreneur’s homosexuality
were measured with the question “What influence does it have on your business if your customers
would know (or that your customers do know) about your homosexuality? The five-point responsescale
ranged from 1 = a very positive influence to 5 = a very negative influence.
The commercial relatedness to the LGBT community was measured by six questions on whether
special efforts are made to: 1. especially attract LGB customers (CR1); 2. find LGB suppliers (CR2);
3. support LGB events (e.g. as sponsor) (CR3); 4. advertize the business with the fact that the owner
is gay or lesbian (CR4); and 5. to find LGB investors (CR5). Participants could agree (1) or disagree
(0) to these items.
The commercial significance of the LGB community was assessed by three questions that asked
about the extent to which the individual business success depends on: 1. the support of the LGB
community (CS1); 2. the support of a LGB network (CS2); and 3. the proximity of the business to a
lesbian and gay district of the city (CS3). The response scale ranged from 1 = “to a very high extent”
to 4 = “not at all”.
The personal relatedness to the LGB community was assessed by two items. The first item was the
response to the question “How important have been the following reasons for your decision to get self
employed?: I got self employed to be able to support the LGB community”. The four-point response
scale ranged from 1=very important to 4= not important at all. The second item was the response to
the question “What does business success mean to you personally?: To be able to support the
lesbian and gay community”, that could be agreed to (1) or not (0).
The importance of an assumed adequateness of the business sector choice in terms of fitting to gay
or lesbian entrepreneurs was assessed by the question “Did you choose your sector of selfemployment
because of it is accepted to work as gay/as a lesbian in that business area?”. The threepoint
response scale was 1 = “This absolutely was my consideration”, 2 = “Up to a certain degree this
was my consideration”, and 3 = “This absolutely was not my consideration”.
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