The Improvement of Women’s Entrepreneurial Competence in Rural Tourism: An Action Learning Perspective

Women’s Entrepreneurship and the Concept of Entrepreneurial Competence

After 40 years of study, one fundamental contribution of women’s entrepreneurship research involves the acknowledgment that entrepreneurship is a gendered phenomenon (Jennings & Brush, 2013). Pioneering entrepreneurship studies generally perceive entrepreneurs as gendered-neutral and emphasize specific characteristics, such as an innovation orientation, as highlighted by Joseph Schumpeter, or a risk-taking attitude as mentioned by Knight (Brouwer, 2002). However, studies on women entrepreneurs indicate that entrepreneurial activity occurs internally and, thus, is affected by socially constructed systems (Lee-Gosselin & Grisé, 1990). Accordingly, rather than focusing on the common characteristics associated with the entrepreneurial stereotype—such as preferences toward innovation or risk-taking—this study defines women entrepreneurs as females involved in making any independent business decisions related to managing a business; most studies of women entrepreneurs in the tourism industry also adopt similar definitions (Chitsike, 2000; Koutsou et al., 2009; Lassithiotaki, 2011; Tajeddini et al., 2016).

As managing a business requires complex abilities, a competency approach should be employed to explore the relationship between an enterprise’s performance and its founders. Entrepreneurial competency is regarded as a higher level characteristic encompassing personality traits, skills, and knowledge (Bird, 1995). The characteristics associated with entrepreneurship, such as innovation, risk taking, and seizing of opportunities, are regarded as different aspects of entrepreneurial competence likely to result in better market performance. Specifically, SMEs’ special management structure and independence lead the business’ success or failure to largely depend on the operator’s entrepreneurial competency (Mitchelmore & Rowley, 2010). Carson et al. (1995) indicated that entrepreneurial marketing is inherently informal, simple, and haphazard. Accordingly, the individual network of SMEs’ entrepreneurs is vital to its development (Gilmore & Carson, 1999).

Furthermore, scholars tend to agree that entrepreneurial competency is composed of different abilities related to the entrepreneurs’ changing role in different business development phases, ranging from the start-up and sustaining phases to maturity (Mitchelmore & Rowley, 2010). Moreover, Man et al.’s (2002) empirical study identified six major areas of entrepreneurial competency that are particularly suitable for SMEs: opportunity, relationship, conceptual, organizing, strategic, and commitment competencies. Specifically, opportunity competencies are those related to recognizing and utilizing market opportunities. Relationship-based competencies involve the interactions with various stakeholders. Conceptual competencies refer to different conceptual abilities, such as decision skills, and the collecting and processing of complex information. Organizing competencies refer to the abilities focused on team-building and training employees, among other functions. Strategic competencies focus on setting, evaluating, and implementing the firm’s strategies. Finally, the commitment competency drives entrepreneurs to continue to improve their business.

Most important, entrepreneurial competency can be acquired in the workplace or through training and education, as the competency concept refers to individual skills, knowledge, and experience (Man & Lau, 2005). Nussbaum (2000) indicated that many women in developing countries suffer from an acute capability failure in addition to poverty. In line with Nussbaum’s (2000) argument, a global survey reveals significantly lower rates of entrepreneurship among women than men (Malach-Pines & Schwartz, 2008). Accordingly, the key to eliminating women’s entrepreneurial inferiority is to improve their entrepreneurial competency.

Women Entrepreneurs in Rural Tourism and the Improvement of Women’s Entrepreneurship

The tourism industry provides more opportunities for women to be self-employed managers or entrepreneurs than the manufacturing industry (Skalpe, 2007). More women tend to be entrepreneurs in rural tourism, as the “wives” typically run such an industry (Nilsson, 2002). Although an increasing number of women own and manage rural tourism businesses, women entrepreneurs face various difficulties in every phrase, from start-up and operations to development. Little (1991) and Koutsou et al. (2009) revealed that rural women were reluctant to make independent decisions owing to a lack of self-confidence, professional skills, capital, and social capital, as these make it difficult for them to sustain their businesses. Additionally, studies conducted in different countries—such as France, Indonesia, and Botswana—all revealed that women may nominally own and manage small businesses, but still depend on their spouses for final decisions (Annes & Wright, 2015; Mbaiwa & Stronza, 2010; Tajeddini et al., 2016). Furthermore, a female-operated business’ success does not necessarily lead to the enterprise’s expansion, but likely to meet immediate needs of the family (Chitsike, 2000; Tucker & Boonabaana, 2012). Consequently, rural women encounter difficulty in starting and developing their businesses without external help.

Public policies and academic theories are designed to help women entrepreneurs in rural tourism. Generally, these development programs can be categorized into resource- and competence-based approaches. The former focuses on providing extrinsic help, while the latter focuses on intrinsic factors. Regarding the former, for example, Levy and Lerch (1991) called for stakeholders to provide more flexible jobs and support policies for business start-ups for women, as the authors found that women’s employment opportunities relied more on an extended social network and required more support than those involving men. Furthermore, the government in Greece launched a “top-down” program to promote rural women’s entrepreneurship that included, but was not limited to, recognizing business opportunities and building cooperatives for entrepreneurs (Koutsou et al., 2009).

The resource-based approach may help women start businesses and temporarily increase their incomes. However, the potential risk exists that these enterprises may fail or women may be compelled to hand them over to men when support policies cease or the program goals change (Ferguson, 2011). Heavy reliance on external help also promotes a dependency culture that damages women’s self-confidence and capability building (Kwaramba et al., 2012). Hence, programs increasingly emphasize the improvement of competence. For example, Scheyvens (2007) found that women in Tanzania have increased their confidence, skills, and income by participating in tourism-related vocational training. Furthermore, Moswetea and Lacey (2015) examined Botswana’s rural areas to discover that women who could speak English and received more education through a women’s leadership program were more likely to be successful in the tourism industry and receive more diversified and lucrative employment opportunities. Similar situations were also observed in Vietnam (Tran & Walter, 2014) and Fiji (Movono & Dahles, 2017), where most intellectual support programs relied on tourism experts’ teaching, and the dominant educational method involved vocational training on business skills and marketing.

However, the competence-based approach also faces many difficulties. First, only a small group may benefit, as this approach requires intensive investment in personnel who act as instructors. In the previously mentioned Botswana case (Moswetea & Lacey, 2015), researchers observed that very few women received help, and even fewer were successful. The second problem relates to the limited capabilities of instructors or experts. Some instructors from development agencies were found to have little understanding of how to operate a tourism business, even if they were willing to provide intellectual support (Spenceley & Meyer, 2012). Third, as with the previously noted method, the requirements for entrepreneurs’ capabilities have constantly changed due to their various sizes and the developing market, but extant programs primarily focus on the initial business phase. Therefore, a new perspective aside from the “helping” discourse is needed to understand necessary improvements in entrepreneurial competence (Glow & Johanson, 2009).

Action Learning as an Approach to Improve Women’s Entrepreneurial Competence

One key difference between the resource- and competence-based approaches is that the latter emphasizes independence and self-determination. As rural women typically have less access to formal education and extensive social networks (Getz & Carlsen, 2000; Koutsou et al., 2009; Phelan & Sharpley, 2011), action learning becomes an appropriate perspective to examine the actual dynamics of improvements in women’s entrepreneurship in a rural setting (Tonneau & Rey-Valette, 2011; Williams, 2009). While the “action learning” concept was first proposed in leadership and organizational development theories, it is currently also widely employed to explain individual learning and competency developments (Cho & Egan, 2009). As Revans (1998, p. 83) summarized, “No learning without action, and no action without learning.”

Dilworth and Willis (2003, p. 11) note that action learning refers to “a process of reflecting on one’s work and beliefs in the supportive/confrontational environment of one’s peers for the purpose of gaining new insights and resolving real business and community problems in real time.” Accordingly, three factors—namely, one’s work and beliefs, a supportive versus confrontational environment, and real-time problem-solving—are highly important in understanding action learning. The learning-loop theory is also relevant in understanding this action learning in terms of the level of learning (Tonneau & Rey-Valette, 2011). For example, Argyris and Schön (1996) introduced the single and double-loop learning concepts to characterize changes in group routines in collaborative contexts.

The process of action learning is always conducted within social situations and is inevitably constructed by social ties (Cope & Watts, 2000). In particular, SMEs rely heavily on personal networks to support their businesses because they rarely have the resources to engage in sophisticated marketing initiatives (Carson et al., 1995, Gilmore & Carson, 1999). The study conducted by White et al. (2016) indicated that women entrepreneurs of SMEs benefited from participating in social networking as they gained knowledge, connected to the industry, and formed friendships. Moreover, the process of reflection, which is emphasized by both the action learning theory and the reflective practice theory of Kolb (1984), is difficult to realize without social interaction. Reflection means viewing situations from different perspectives and through different lenses, with customers and peer entrepreneurs often acting as “mirrors.” Accordingly, a socially constructed relationship is vital to entrepreneurs as it provides information, establishes trust, and helps them critically reflect and act (Higgins & Aspinall, 2011; Thorpe et al., 2009).

Tourism research includes scattered studies that reveal learning by doing, learning from others, and on-the-job training were effective for middle-aged and impoverished populations, such as rural women (Zhang et al., 2015). However, few studies examine why and how action learning was particularly important in developing competencies. Notably, another group of studies relevant to this research topic focused more on knowledge management. For instance, Cooper (2006) noted that the creation, flow, and accumulation of knowledge is the foundation of tourism practitioners’ competitiveness. He further argued that tourism organizations and the entrepreneurial community possess rich tacit and intangible resources that are difficult to be codified and rely heavily on face-to-face communications.

In summary, entrepreneurial competencies allow for interventions in terms of the selection and teaching of entrepreneurship, which is precisely why the action-learning and knowledge-management perspectives can be combined when studying improvements to rural women’s entrepreneurship. Previous studies have already observed that marginalized, subordinated women were empowered through their home-based rural tourism enterprises (Ferguson, 2011; Moswetea & Lacey, 2015; Movono & Dahles, 2017; Scheyvens, 2000), while the current study attempts to delve into the actual action and learning processes of rural women entrepreneurs who begin their businesses at a low level. Hence, this work examines how and what type of help rural women can use to significantly improve their entrepreneurial competencies and achieve market success.

Hui Gu Niang Case

This research employs the Hui Gu Niang (HGN) program from China’s Yuexi County to study the improvement of women’s entrepreneurial competencies from a dynamic behavioral perspective. The HGN case is appropriate given three aspects. First, a traditional approach in studying entrepreneurial competencies involves breaking down successful leaders’ behaviors, attitudes, and skills into measurable aspects (Mitchelmore & Rowley, 2010). The HGN program trained hundreds of middle-aged, poorly educated rural women with scant tourism knowledge to become qualified operators of their family businesses, thus providing an excellent opportunity to answer the question regarding how a development agency can improve ordinary women’s entrepreneurship. Second, the question of improving women’s entrepreneurship relates to different stakeholders, including rural women, development agency’s staff, governmental officials, and other market competitors. Meanwhile, improving entrepreneurial competence is a dynamic process; in this respect, the case study is particularly suitable for exploring complex procedural questions (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007). Third, the authors were introduced to the case by an acquaintance highly involved in the program and were approved to interview participants and examine relevant documents.

Yuexi County is located in southwestern Anhui Province, and its residents have traditionally relied on agriculture for income. In the late 1990s, the local government began to develop the picturesque county’s tourism industry, and tourists began to visit Yuexi on weekends. Some business-savvy villagers took advantage of this trend by hosting tourists in their homes. This has fostered a prevalent form of rural tourism in China known as nongjiale (Ling et al., 2013), which is roughly equivalent to a farm stay or village bed and breakfast. The nongjiale business is mostly small scale and family operated, and rural women, including those in Yuexi, are major participants in this business model.

Prior to 2008, the nongjiale business in Yuexi was simple, with only a few participants. Most tourists visited during the day. Thus, these nongjiale acted more like local restaurants than hotels. In 2008, the All-China Women’s Federation ¹ (ACWF) of Anhui Province collaborated with the commercial and tourism bureaus to initiate a development program called Hui Gu Niang to assist with more women participating in and benefiting from tourism development. ACWF is the largest women’s organization in China, with the mission to represent and safeguard the rights and interests of women and promote gender equality (Liu et al., 2020). Yuexi County implemented this program and became a model for Anhui Province, which is why Yuexi was chosen for this case study.

From 2008 to 2018, the HGN program experienced several adjustments in response to market changes. As illustrated by the program’s documents, key events denote that the program’s implementation can be divided into three stages:

Data Collection and Sampling

As a qualitative research, in-depth interviews, observations, and documents were used to collect data. The authors conducted two rounds of fieldwork: the first was conducted in 2017 and lasted for 22 days, while the second occurred in the winter of 2018 and lasted for 19 days. The recruitment of local staff and rural women entrepreneurs utilized the snowballing method. First interviewees introduced more relevant staff and women entrepreneurs to the authors as they participated in the HGN program and once enrolled in training courses and visiting tours together. Thus, they developed close social relationship. In 2017, the authors conducted first-round interviews with 2 ACWF staff, 2 officials, and 10 women entrepreneurs. Additional questions were raised when transcribing the data, including whether the cooperation between the paired staff and women changed due to modifications in firms’ size and the market environment. The authors returned to the field in 2018 and ultimately completed interviews with 11 staff from all relevant departments, 22 women entrepreneurs, and 4 employees working in nongjiale businesses. Each interview lasted more than 40 minutes.

As shown in Table 1, 11 staff members came from various levels and departments within the government. The authors interviewed ACWF staff both from Anhui province and Yuexi county to explore how local government flexibly adopted policies. It is noteworthy that three interviewed ACWF staff are all female, corresponding to the mission of this organization. Huangwei village and Yanjia village are located in Huangwei town, which has the most HGN nongjiale in Yuexi. Accordingly, the authors not only interviewed the chief and officials of Huangwei town but also the director of the tourism bureau.

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Table 1

Information of Interviewees

Category	Name	Position	Age, years	Gender
Government staff	Ms. Liu	Director of the Development Department of ACWF in Anhui	40	F
	Ms. Xu	Director of staff of ACWF in Anhui	35	F
	Ms. Hu	President of ACWF in Yuexi	35	F
	Mr. Zhao	Director of the Tourism Bureau in Yuexi	40	M
	Mr. Xu	Director of the Public communication Bureau in Yuexi	36	M
	Mr. Liu	Chief of Huangwei Town	35	M
	Mr. Shu	Official of Huangwei Town; assigned to SC nongjiale	50	M
	Mr. Chu	Official of Huangwei Town	30	M
	Mr. Yu	Director of Tourism Bureau in Huangwei Town	35	M
	Mr. Cai	Chief of Huangwei Village	60	M
	Mr. Zhu	Chief of Yanjia Village	28	M
Women entrepreneurs	Ms. Zhou	LLWW nongjiale	40	F
	Ms. Chang	WYG nongjiale	38	F
	Ms. Chu	JB nongjiale	46	F
	Ms. Pen	PX nongjiale	34	F
	Ms. Sun	XY nongjiale	50	F
	Ms. Xia	SX nongjiale	42	F
	Ms. Huang	SLTJ nongjiale	30	F
	Ms. Yan	SM nongjiale	53	F
	Ms. Yu	SC nongjiale	46	F
	Ms. Chen	HC nongjiale	40	F
	Ms. Zhang	HY nongjiale	38	F
	Ms. Cai	LSYG nongjiale	37	F
	Ms. Hong	XKL nongjiale	38	F
	Ms. Xiao	SS nongjiale	50	F
	Ms. Li	SLRJ nongjiale	38	F
	Ms. Yu	TXHP nongjiale	55	F
	Ms. Liu	MY nongjiale	50	F
	Ms. Wang	LX nongjiale	48	F
	Ms. Peng	BY nongjiale	55	F
	Ms. Sheng	QH nongjiale	40	F
	Ms. Lin	CZSZ nongjiale	34	F
	Ms. Qian	CM nongjiale	37	F
Employee	Mr. Wang	Staff of SLRJ nongjiale	40	M
	Ms. Cai	Staff of SCRJ nongjiale	48	F
	Ms. Liu	Staff of YXWA nongjiale	28	F
	Ms. Sun	Cook of LSYG nongjiale	39	F

All of the business owners are married with 1 or 2 children; 9 of them are between 30 and 40 years old, 7 are between 40 and 50, and six women aged above 50. Most of them were housewives before going into business. Some relatively young women went out to work before, such as Ms. Huang (SLTJ nongjiale) and Ms. Li (SLRJ nongjiale). Most only finished junior high or primary school, and none have attended college. Before joining the HGN project, most did not have tourism employment experience, except for Ms. Sun (XY nongjiale) who worked in a hotel in a nearby attraction for 8 years. It is noteworthy that all interviewees were local, and the nongjiale is a typical community-based tourism. All study participants provided consent and were given pseudonyms to ensure their privacy and confidentiality.

ACWF staff members and officials were asked about the details of work experience and interactions with women entrepreneurs. Women entrepreneurs were asked about their family lives, business operations, as well as their interactions with ACWF staff, local officials, and other entrepreneurs. Four employees discussed their lives and work experience and reported that they gained additional income and improved individual capabilities after working in nongjiale.

Additional data were collected from observations and documents. For example, the authors also visited 8 towns and villages in Yuexi County, and 65 nongjiale businesses in total, to converse with guests and take photos of the businesses’ decor, menus, advertising leaflets, and shop signs. The authors also collected 16 reports from newspapers, magazines, and online media about the HGN program, as well as 11 official documents from ACWF and relevant departments in the Yuexi county government.

Data Analysis Process

The interviews were all conducted in Chinese and transcribed to English by the authors. English quotes presented in this article were separately translated by the first and second authors. If the two English translations were very different, a third person who did not see the original Chinese statement was asked to translate it back to Chinese. Subsequently, the English translation that is closer to the original Chinese statement was used.

A thematic analysis was used to examine the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006), beginning with reading the collected texts repeatedly, and followed by identifying and encoding content related to women entrepreneurs’ action learning and entrepreneurial competencies. Second, the encoded data were divided into different themes and conceptualized. The authors searched for themes across a data set to find repeated patterns of meaning. For example, many women entrepreneurs mentioned their real-time challenges adopting to a changing market. Moreover, the cooperation between rural women and ACWF staff is constantly mentioned. Thus, “women entrepreneurs’ action learning” and “cooperation modes” are identified as important themes. After repeatedly coding and reviewing the responses, the encoded data were eventually redefined into six primary themes: (a) market competition, (b) women entrepreneurs’ action learning, (c) the cooperation modes, (d) the learning network, (e) the performance of women-operated nongjiale businesses, and (f) changes in women’s entrepreneurial competence. The third step involved establishing the relationships between the themes. For example, women entrepreneurs’ action learning (Theme 2) and cooperation modes (Theme 3) change depending on market competition (Theme 1). Eventually, three main categories of related themes emerged: (a) market competition and real-time problems, (b) collaborative action learning, and (c) women’s entrepreneurial competence.

As mentioned previously, the HGN program can be divided into three stages. Importantly, the following section starts with a preprogram stage without intellectual support from ACWF as this study intends to examine the effect of ACWF’s intervention. The following section demonstrates how ACWF and women entrepreneurs’ cooperation responding to the market change their action learning and their competences. Each stage was first analyzed through an introduction of the market and women’s problem; the authors then provided examples to illustrate the collaborative action learning, and the change of competence was summarized. Finally, the authors discussed why the learning mode in that stage worked.

Preprogram Stage: Family-Based Spontaneous Learning

The earliest female nongjiale in Yuexi was founded in the late 1990s when the local tourism market emerged. There were few well-established tourist attractions or tour groups; hence, early entrepreneurs starting the nongjiale business mainly sought alternative income that could balance their family life and work. Ms. Yu (SC nongjiale) stated that “At that time, it was impossible to make a lot of money from nongjiale. My husband worked outside the home and I stayed at home to take care of the family. I earned some extra money through the business.” Owing to the small scale of market and the idea of “supplemental income,” most early entrepreneurs were risk-averse. They utilized their own houses, adding some tables in the halls to host guests or temporarily opening little restaurants with an influx of visitors. Rural entrepreneurs rarely actively attracted customers.

Early entrepreneurs wondered what a successful nongjiale could look like. Intuitively, they regarded the nongjiale service as a type of sophisticated home care and tried their best to translate existing home-care experience into commercial service skills. They mainly discussed operational difficulties with family members. Ms. Chu (JB nongjiale) said that every two or three days she would discuss with her husband and children the preferences of different guests.

In addition to family members, customers also served as knowledge source. A few women attached importance to collecting customers’ criticism and suggestions; however, they often did not understand why customers made these requests. Although they tried to meet these requirements, they tended to regard them as merely individual preferences. Ms. Chu provided another example:

One day, a tourist suggested we replace our menu on the blackboard with a printed one. Two days later, another guest told me that he preferred to order dishes by selecting “raw materials” in the kitchen rather than using any menu. Finally, we provided the two types of menus simultaneously, and also allowed guests to order in the kitchen. We had to do it all as we did not know what guests actually wanted.

Sometimes, when entrepreneurs’ existing knowledge cannot meet customers’ needs, they would imitate what they had observed in other restaurants. This type of imitative learning was quite superficial, but it still provided some inspiration. Ms. Xiao (SS nongjiale) shared her experience:

I had ordered a full set of customized ceramic tableware after visiting a well-known restaurant in the city, which helped us earn praise from many customers. However, I can’t imitate everything as other entrepreneurs might think I am “stealing” their ideas. Further, we can only learn something that is easily observed.

Therefore, early women entrepreneurs implemented action learning in this stage, but the investigation showed that most of them failed to sustain their businesses due to inability to seize market opportunities. Ms. Yu (SC nongjiale) expressed her problem with this type of family-based learning below:

After years of operation, I still do not know how to create and maintain customer relationships. We seldom talk with our customers in depth because they always complained about the taste of food or sanitary conditions, forcing us to cut price. I can only consult with our family, as none of us have seen the outside world before. We do not understand our customers, and don’t understand how to do rural tourism.

Rural women tended to address their knowledge gaps by carrying out the so-called “family-based spontaneous learning” in this stage, which is defined here as an action learning process conducted by women entrepreneurs and their family members; this is characterized by self-organized discussions and “learning by doing.” Without adequate intellectual support from outsiders, spontaneous family-based learning can be problematic due to a limited perspective, resulting in cognitive bias, as illustrated by Ms. Yu.“We have never been to big hotels as consumers ourselves. None of us can figure out what the urban tourists want.” Similarly, Ms. Chu stated that “Although we often discussed the tourists’ complaints together, what depressed us is that we had no idea of existing problems until the customers complained.”

Although knowledge transfer among family members is conducive to solving certain existing operational problems, it fails to help them effectively explore advanced knowledge (i.e., tourism marketing knowledge), and they cannot predict what customers want. For instance, Ms. Chen (HC nongjiale) talked about her frustrations:

To sustain our business, our family tried everything we knew, but still failed. . . . In short, what we know is only what we used to know before operating a business, and what we did not know previously is still unknown, even after years of operation.

In summary, women entrepreneurs’ early experiences showed that spontaneous learning failed to improve their competencies as they passively responded to customers’ requirements with limited understanding. First, this learning approach is primarily performed within a small-scale and homogeneous learning network. Entrepreneurs then tend to exploit their prior knowledge, rather than introducing new external knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). Second, this learning approach is a typical single-loop learning that is markedly incompatibility with the changing market (Tonneau & Rey-Valette, 2011). These women struggled to cope with “picky” customers that they did not understand. More important, they did not have sufficient access and methods to understand their customers.

First Stage: Problem-Driven Collaborative Learning

Yuexi County’s rural tourism stepped into a new stage in 2008 as six tourist attractions opened, increasing the number of overnight tourists and tour groups. The increasing prosperity of the local tourism market introduced unprecedented pressure, as well as opportunities, to women entrepreneurs. The local ACWF noticed the crucial role of women in nongjiale business; accordingly, they investigated several early entrepreneurs to develop supporting strategies, and the problem of family-based spontaneous learning was recognized. Ms. Liu, director of the Development Department of the ACWF in Anhui, commented:

For most early entrepreneurs, their products and services cannot meet the tourists’ needs. More importantly, they have no ideas about these problems. Therefore, we decided to choose some women entrepreneurs as pioneers to attend the HGN program. We chose staff to form “study groups” with rural women, giving these pioneers one-on-one guidance to identify problems.

Recognizing the women entrepreneurs’ lack of ability to seize market opportunity, the assigned staff focused on cultivating their awareness of communicating with customers. SC nongjiale served as an excellent example of this. It was located near the entrance to a popular scenic spot. Mr. Shu (the assigned staff) introduced several tour groups to Ms. Yu (the owner) by utilizing his social network. Moreover, Ms. Yu and Mr. Shu had many discussions regarding the procedures and details of hosting tour groups. Mr. Shu not only gave Ms. Yu a lot of suggestions, as he had rich experience in management, but also encouraged her to collect the opinions of customers and tour operators. Based on the feedback, they cooperated to analyze existing problems, such as how to design customized reception plans for each group. Mr. Shu reflected this experience and concluded that:

I should identify problems from the perspective of the entrepreneur, helping her to think about the underlying reasons for the identified problems and then finding solutions. If Ms. Yu could discover a new problem and successfully solve it every time she receives a new tour group, she would be able to improve her communication with guests very quickly.

ACWF demanded all assigned staff initiate similar discussions with paired women entrepreneurs, aiming at exploring operational problems deeply rooted in daily practices. It is noteworthy that although ACWF staff are not experts in rural tourism, they still bring new perspectives regarding the management of nongjiale, enabling women entrepreneurs to overcome their cognitive biases. Ms. Yan (SM nongjiale) shared her experience:

I felt Ms. Wan (the paired staff) was like my partner rather than an “official.” For example, one day, we stood in my yard, looking at the dining furniture and decorations and discussing how to make the place cleaner. Then, she suggested that firewood should be stored in a separate zone instead of piling up in the yard. I thought it was a good idea as I have never noticed the firewood before.

The firewood was a part of Ms. Yan’s rural life, but the urban citizens did not like it. Ms. Wan noticed this point, which was a blind spot for Ms. Yan. Moreover, the paired staff also spent much time helping entrepreneurs summarize their practical experiences. The one-on-one guidance provided by the ACWF staff lasted for 3 to 4 years, and some pioneering women entrepreneurs have grown into influential competitors in the local market. Compared with early entrepreneurs, they performed better in communicating with stakeholders and maintaining repeat customers. These women entrepreneurs also greatly enhanced their confidence in sustaining businesses. Ms. Yu (SC nongjiale) recalled:

With Mr. Shu’s help, I have successfully hosted many tour groups, and established a trustworthy image for SC nongjiale. After several years of development, the new problem became that SC nongjiale was too small to take all the orders during the peak season. Therefore, the whole family agreed to invest more to expand our business.

At this stage a “problem-driven collaborative learning” forms, which is a group-learning process based on frequent face-to-face communications between paired ACWF staff and entrepreneurs. This leads to multiple-perspective discussions, collective reflections, and joint problem solving. The first advancement of this learning mode over family-based learning is this newly formed group helps entrepreneurs expand their learning network and obtain high-level and heterogeneous external knowledge sources. In the case of SC nongjiale, Ms. Yu not only learned from Mr. Shu but also had opportunities to learn from Mr. Shu’s acquaintances, who worked in travel agencies. In the process of frequent, reciprocal, and in-depth exchanges with outside intellectuals, rural women acquired a great deal of new knowledge, thus improving their marketing ability.

Deakins and Freel (2005) suggested that if an experienced expert is willing to direct others’ entrepreneurial behaviors, the entrepreneur’s capabilities would be considerably enhanced due to the knowledge transferred from the expert to the nascent entrepreneur. Nevertheless, experts in rural tourism are challenging to find. This study reveals that, in the first stage of the HGN program, the assigned staff had been crucial in replacing experts. Remarkably, this strategy’s effectiveness primarily resulted from the problem-driven collaborative learning between staff and entrepreneurs, rather than the knowledge-transfer effects.

The second advancement of this “problem-driven collaborative learning” is that it helps entrepreneurs move toward advanced double-loop learning, focusing more on the causal relationships behind complicated phenomena. According to Argyris and Schön (1996), double-loop learning equips entrepreneurs to better handle complicated problems and seize opportunities. As stated above, ACWF staff cultivated the entrepreneurs’ habit of thinking about the causal relationships behind complex phenomena. With a deeper understanding of customers, they seemed no longer “picky” or “strange.” Ms. Sheng (QH nongjiale) stated as follows:

After jointly analyzing previous customer complaints with my paired ACWF staff, I find what customers want is not a lower price but a better experience. For example, if someone complains the taste of a dish, it does not necessarily mean that the customer wants to cut the price. I will invite him into the kitchen, explain how I cooked his food, and may re-cook the dish according to his instructions.

With an extended learning network and a double-loop learning mode driven by real-time problem, women entrepreneurs responded to customers’ demands proactively. Their competencies of opportunity and relationship development largely improved due to the cooperation (Man et al., 2002). Increasing confidence also led women entrepreneurs such as Ms. Yu to invest more and expand her business, indicating the enhancement of commitment competence (Man et al., 2002).

Second Stage: Organized Imitative Learning

The tourism market of Yuexi continued expanding after 2010 with the development of luxury and chain hotels, which were better equipped and had higher service quality. Competing with these hotels became the main challenge for village homestays. The “one-on-one” strategy could not meet the increasing demand from fierce competition, as the deficiency that ACWF staff were not professional experts in tourism was exposed. Ms. Hu, the President of ACWF in Yuexi, recognized this problem:

As ACWF staff, we are not professionals of rural tourism. Therefore, the cooperation between women entrepreneurs and our staff is somewhat limited in identifying crucial problems and finding excellent solutions. To help them compete with large resorts, we decided to promote the best practices of successful nongjiale.

With the help of the Provincial Tourism Bureau, an expert team organized by the ACWF conducted an in-depth investigation of several leading nongjiale in the Huangshan Mountain area, which is a world-famous tourist destination, and then summarized their advanced experience into a set of service standards for nongjiale in Yuexi. The Yuexi ACWF then recruited more women entrepreneurs who were willing to upgrade their products and services to participate in the HGN program.

The ACWF staff systematically introduced this new standard to HGN participants. For women entrepreneurs, these standards not only included details of service procedure and norms, but they also provided a systematic solution to generalized problems in management. As Ms. Wang (LX nongjiale) stated:

The HGN quality standard recommended by ACWF is very useful as it explains many problems that we are unaware of or do not know how to solve, such as the style of staff uniforms, restaurant decoration, service procedures, and food pricing. After following this standard, I feel that we can completely replicate a successful enterprise, which undoubtedly enhances my confidence in competing with those large resorts.

To help women entrepreneurs better understand this standard, the local ACWF also organized multiple visits to successful village homestays. Entrepreneurs could directly observe how employees prepare food and to control the quality of service and consult for management issues. In addition, the ACWF set up a WeChat group ² between entrepreneurs and managers of benchmark enterprises to facilitate their communication.

Additionally, women entrepreneurs who attended the HGN program often met together like friends, discussing their confusions and experiences related to management and operation. It was through repeated discussions and knowledge exchanges that women entrepreneurs gradually developed a clear understanding of how to successfully operate a nongjiale. Ms. Wang (LX nongjiale) shared her feelings:

After attending the HGN program for several years, I feel as if I had taken a business management course in a college. I have never been to college. There are many people who helped us learn this course, such as the ACWF staff, the training experts, the managers working in homestays that we visited, and other sisters participating in the HGN program.

It is not unusual that Ms. Wang referred to other HGN participants as “sisters” as these women did recognize each other as family. It is also interesting to compare women entrepreneurs’ comments on “organized training courses” with this set of service standards. Ms. Chen (HC nongjiale) described her confusion regarding the former: “Several years ago, I attended a two-day training course about tourism service organized by the government. Disappointingly, this course was all about concepts and theories. It did not answer my question about operating nongjiale.”

ACWF also created an incentive system for those women who performed well in this stage. Ms. Xu introduced that the model nongjiale could receive a prize of 70,000 yuan ³ from the ACWF of Anhui Province. Importantly, the award was not paid in cash, as model participants were required to use the money for the decoration or expansion of their homestays. Accordingly, this award system not only ensures business development but also improves women’s organizing and strategic competencies.

The learning mode in this stage is thus defined as “organized imitative learning” through two characteristics. First, ACWF organized the imitative learning process, which involved choosing benchmarks, transcribing the benchmarks’ experiences into unified standards, and selecting eligible entrepreneurs as imitators. Second, ACWF strived to improve entrepreneurs’ knowledge-absorption abilities by offering training programs, field trip, and incentive policies. In fact, the systematic imitation of large-scale successful nongjiale is proposed as a strategy for SMEs to identify complicated problems and find effective solutions (Lieberman & Asaba, 2006).

The organized imitative learning significantly and positively affected women’s entrepreneurial competence for three reasons. First, while larger firms typically prevent individual spontaneous imitation, organized imitative learning often connects entrepreneurs with benchmark firms. Second, unlike the problem-driven learning approach, organized imitative learning is based on structured experiences reflecting the situational knowledge justified by successful firms’ practices. The unified quality standard and successful practices of benchmark enterprises can provide rural women with a structured “map of knowledge” regarding management, which greatly improved their conceptual competence. These women rarely benefited from abstract “theory and concept,” as lamented by Ms. Chen but learned the best practices quickly. Finally, frequent educational activities enable women entrepreneurs to extend their learning networks, which include diversified stakeholders—such as officials from various departments, leading firms’ managers, and peers attending the same activities—to further improve their relationship-coordination abilities (Man et al., 2002).

Organized imitative learning means rural women have become increasingly proactive. In the former problem-driven collaborative learning model, they learned with the help of ACWF staff. However, with improvement in their competences, women entrepreneurs become more independent and reflexive. Mrs. Cai (LSYG Nongjiale) stated as follows: “After visiting those successful enterprises, I realized that although my nongjiale is small, it also needed standardized management.” Mr. Shu, the official, concluded his observation this way:

Before, we had to make joint efforts to identify the problems and corresponding solutions, but things are different now. Although we still examine problems together, it is mainly up to the business owner to find the solutions. For example, they would call the training expert or other peers, or consult the managers at benchmark enterprises.

Third Stage: Collective Innovative Learning

The success of the HGN program stimulated the investment boom of rural nongjiale in Yuexi. According to a follow-up survey conducted by Yuexi’s ACWF, 105 female nongjiale had formally participated in the HGN program until 2015, and most of them had achieved considerable profits. Some large-scale nongjiale clusters have formed. In the new stage, women entrepreneurs faced the increasing challenge of homogeneity, which is a problem resulting from organized imitative learning. Ms. Peng (BY nongjiale) expressed her anxiety: “More than 100 HGN nongjiale are following the same standard. Moreover, hundreds of new businesses are imitating our HGN nongjiale. It seems all nongjiale in Yuexi are precisely the same.”

Homogenization threatens to destroy the tourists’ experience and weaken the profitability of nongjiale. Although a set of quality standards helped nongjiale standardize their service and management, women entrepreneurs must adapt to the rapidly changing market through continuous innovation in the long run. Ms. Hu recalled how they decided to change the support strategy:

In order to reduce homogenization, ACWF and the Yuexi government decided to launch an innovation program named “each homestay has its special product, and each village has its characteristics.” The ACWF staff should shift their focus from helping entrepreneurs uncover problems to encouraging them to innovate.

Specifically, the ACWF staff cooperated with women entrepreneurs to investigate the market demands, helped them choose a unique positioning according to their expertise in food supply or cooking methods and explore how to continuously invent new products. Mr. Liu described the change in his job in this way:

With the increasing number of women participating in HGN, we have changed from one-on-one guidance to one-on-many. Now, I mainly encourage them to innovate regarding products. I remind them to start with an innovation plan and then check the results at the end. I would not participate in the specific innovation process.

Moreover, Yuexi’s ACWF encouraged the founding of social associations for women entrepreneurs. With the support of ACWF, these associations often conduct meetings to exchange experiences, hold cooking or service competitions, and develop promotional activities among HGN nongjiale. The ACWF staff have encouraged the entrepreneurs to think about how to connect their product characteristics with the locality in terms of innovation. For example, Ms. Chen (HC nongjiale) said:

There are five female-led nongjiale on this street. We often take part in cooking competitions held by the nongjiale association. Some ACWF staff saw that we were all good at cooking chicken dishes and encouraged us to unite and build a street specialized chicken dish, making it a selling point of this area.

Women entrepreneurs influenced by collective innovation also significantly change their mode of identifying and solving problems. They now solve problems independently. Ms. Zheng (QH nongjiale) provided an excellent example:

I decided to turn the traditional “Yuexi Eight Bowls” ⁴ into our specialty, but encountered many technical problems. For example, the taste of some dishes was not suitable for tourists, and some seasonal ingredients needed substitutes. Hence, I mobilized all my social relations and finally overcame these difficulties in 1 month. Now when tourists mention “Yuexi Eight Bowls,” they choose my homestay first.

The ACWF also made efforts to mobilize social resources and provided numerous opportunities for women entrepreneurs to learn from other industries. This so-called interindustry exchange significantly stimulated entrepreneurs’ passion for innovation. Women entrepreneurs began to combine the nongjiale business with other industries, such as fruit picking and e-commerce, thus constantly redefining even the business of nongjiale. For example, Ms. Wang, the owner of LX nongjiale and the president of the county’s Women Entrepreneurs Association, mentioned:

Communicating with mass media, utilizing an online shopping website, and cooperating with other industries has broadened my horizons and helped me to innovate. Now we have multiple new business models, such as nongjiale plus e-commerce, nongjiale plus fruit-picking, and nongjiale plus organic food sales. We are more than a traditional nongjiale.

Due to this innovative learning, quite a few women nongjiale have overcome the problem of homogenization and began to build specialized selling points and unique strategies. More important, through continuous innovation, they have gradually transformed from traditional nongjiale to comprehensive rural tourism enterprises. Ms. Wang (LX nongjiale) explained the performance of her enterprise, which is one of the largest in Huangwei town. In 2018, LX nongjiale employed nearly 200 employees with an annual income of more than 10 million RMB. ⁵ Ms. Wang said their speed of innovation and expansion is even faster than that of large resorts.

ACWF staff have reduced their efforts spent on guiding the operation of nongjiale, as those entrepreneurs have established their own learning networks. In some comprehensive rural tourism enterprises, entrepreneurs began to employ professional chefs and managers. Women entrepreneurs turned their attention to acquiring new market information and knowledge through frequent interaction with the ACWF, other entrepreneurs, and stakeholders. Ms. Huang (SLTJ nongjiale) said: “I am busy talking to people every day. During the discussions, I come up with some new ideas that deserve a try.” Supported by an enlarged learning network, entrepreneurs carry out various knowledge cocreation activities.

As noted by Shenkar (2010), an excessive reliance on imitative learning may trigger homogeneous market competition. Hence, imitators should eventually evolve into independent innovators to avoid intensifying this trend (Sajeva, 2013). In rural tourism, women entrepreneurs are generally risk-averse, as they are more accustomed to continually imitating successful peers, instead of pursuing high-risk innovations (Jafari-Sadeghi, 2019; Malach-Pines & Schwartz, 2008). However, in the case of HGN, women entrepreneurs have collectively evolved from imitators to innovators. The HGN program’s promotion of “collectively innovative learning” has played a critical role in this transformation.

This “collectively innovative learning” has increasingly matured these women entrepreneurs due to following reasons. First, under the pressure of homogeneous competition, women entrepreneurs are forced to choose innovative learning as their strategy. For instance, Mrs. Zheng took the initiative to create the “Yuexi Eight Bowls” as she had a desire to overtake competitors’ advancements. Second, women entrepreneurs, as members of the HGN program, are likely to acquire creative ideas from diversified industries and regions. Eventually, these rural women have gradually transformed from “necessity-driven” to advanced “opportunity-driven” entrepreneurs and from imitators to innovators.