Creative Industries come to China (MATE)

This paper introduces the special issue “China: Internationalizing the Creative Industries”, describing the Australian Research Council funded “MATE” project which provides the conceptual background for the questions the issue explores. The MATE project began with the expectation that as China evolves from its status as a developing country with an emphasis on primary industries and manufacturing, to a mature, market-driven economy benefiting from high levels of international investment, it will become more actively engaged with the global “knowledge economy” and “information society”. In this context, developments in the “creative industries”, which are playing such an important role in developed economies, might reasonably be expected in China. Although China continues to be characterised by strong central-policy settings, as the domestic consumer market matures there is greater scope for consumer-led creative business development. The “MATE” project aimed to capture some of these changes as they began to gain momentum across a range of services: Media, Advertising, Tourism and Education. This special issue continues this theme with papers that explore the theoretical challenges, economic questions and implications, and practical instantiations of creative industries growth in China. All papers contained in this special issue have been peer-reviewed.

Entrepreneurial intentions of women

Despite advances in gender equity, evidence suggests that the level of business ownership by males continues to be significantly higher than that offemales. Moreover, females, from an early age, have lower entrepreneurial intentions than males. This paper examines previous studies to determine the factors that have been shown to relate to lower entrepreneurial intentions in women, to identify areas where prior research has been inadequate or inconclusive, and to discuss how intentions models might be modified to better explain the lower level of female business start-ups. It was found that the lower level of intentions is related to a range of personal background and attitudinal variables, and these factors are critically examined in this review. It is suggested that future research should focus on role models, networks and life roles in order to better explain female entrepreneurial intentions.