Shared value in female entrepreneurship. A publicness frame in the field of knowledge sharing

Purpose – While most research on female entrepreneurship has been conducted using the traditional private-for-profit logic, with the growing rise of hybrid and public organizational forms, the value of female entrepreneurial initiatives tends to be shared with society at large. Overcoming the traditional distinction between private vs public sectors, this paper relies on the publicness theory and aims to appreciate the shared value of female entrepreneurship by reviewing evidence from the field of knowledge sharing. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conduct a three-phase systematic literature review on female entrepreneurship and knowledge sharing based on a sample of 188 articles for the period 2010–2022 retrieved from the three most extensive databases for evaluating scientific research (i.e. WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar) using a combination of relevant keywords within business and management domain. After the performance analysis of selected publications, the authors conduct a content analysis aimed at identifying the most recurrent theoretical framing, the impact of female entrepreneurship on value creation and the use of knowledge sharing. Finally, the authors conduct a thematic analysis using the theoretical perspective of the publicness to frame how different knowledge-sharing practices have been used in female entrepreneurship to create and spread public value. Findings – The findings reveal that female entrepreneurship research has generally adopted managerial organizational and sociological theoretical frameworks, reported positive implications on value creation and has seldom exploited knowledge-sharing practices, with particular reference to the settings of low level of publicness. In addition, based on the development of the conceptual model, the authors suggest that the practice of networking in organizational structures characterized by a high level of political and/or economic authority makes the pattern of public value-sharing with the entire ecosystem easier. Originality/value – The authors adopt an original approach that frames female entrepreneurship research within the lens of publicness theory to highlight the knowledge-sharing practices that allow the value created by female entrepreneurial initiatives to become a shared value in organizations characterized by high levels of political and/or economic authority. The proposed framework contributes to the research on entrepreneurship and knowledge sharing by providing a structured reference point to carry forward research on gender entrepreneurship and knowledge-sharing practices through the theoretical lens of the publicness.