ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Arab women entrepreneurs in Lebanon perceive and define entrepreneurial leadership and how institutional, patriarchal cultural and normative systems, along with the salient gender ideology and the masculinization of entrepreneurship, influence these women's definitions and conceptualizations. It explains the results of the data analysis and discusses them in relation to the entrepreneurship literature. The women's understanding and definitions reflect a salient understanding of entrepreneurial leadership as survival, transformational and value-oriented, based on contextual experiences that result in a specific mode of leadership called entrepreneurial. The interviews enabled a progressive approach to data analysis, capturing the complexity of normative institutions in a national context and their impact on the women's entrepreneurial experiences. The interviewees' conceptualizations of entrepreneurial leadership also concentrated on the role of entrepreneurs' values, morals and ethics. The Lebanese women entrepreneurs also emphasized the role of entrepreneurial leaders as a source of motivation for employees.
