Family, tradition, and well-being during venture creation: tensions, dilemmas, and opportunities

The last decade or two saw the emergence of a new academic conversation regarding the relationship between venture creation and well-being, attracting multi-disciplinary attention and wide interest among leading economists, psychologists, and business and entrepreneurship scholars (Benz & Frey, 2008; Ryff, 2019; Wiklund, Nikolaev, Shir, Foo, & Bradley, 2019).

This follows an increasing understanding that engagement in entrepreneurship may not be based purely on risk and profit, and that a variety of different concerns motivate entrepreneurs in their pursuit. Entrepreneurship is claimed as more like a life project – a practice and a self-organized act – that involves the whole person together with his/her significant connections with others in the world, and thus should be understood from within a particular community and the historical understanding of its traditions, values, and commitments (Gadamer, 2013; MacIntyre, 2013).

Nevertheless, despite this welcoming interest in the actual life and well-being of individual entrepreneurs – and despite decades of research on social and sustainable entrepreneurship – we have little understanding about the social and relational nature of entrepreneurs’ sense of the good life, i.e., of eudaimonia, during the process of venture creation. While positive relations to others constitutes a core aspect of the eudaimonic view (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Shir & Ryff, 2021), it is without a doubt that the nature and the quality of these relations also affect the wide range of entrepreneurial expressions of well-being.

The family – its links to entrepreneurs’ roles and self-understanding, expectations and their vision of good life – seems especially important in this regard (Powell & Eddleston, 2013; Zellweger, Nason, Nordqvist, & Brush, 2013). No entrepreneur remains completely buffered and isolated, and the closer family, in most cases, remains a strong locus of moral and social influence which can both direct and deflect, empower and frustrate, and enable and disturb, the entrepreneurial quest and its existential rewards.
Entrepreneurs being embedded in social relationships is surely a widely acknowledged in the entrepreneurship literature (H. Aldrich, Zimmer, & Jones, 1986; Burt, 2003; Larson & Starr, 1993). Interestingly, however, this embeddedness approach has somewhat overlooked the family as a social institution (Howard E. Aldrich & Cliff, 2003). This gap has existed even though the literature emphasizes how family influences the start-up activities (Steier, Chua, & Chrisman, 2009), and how family members so often play a role in founding teams (Ruef, Aldrich, & Carter, 2003) and in resource mobilization (Howard E Aldrich, Renzulli, & Langton, 1998).

In general, it is well-established that the family can have a strong impact on entrepreneurs’ business approaches, opportunities, and outcomes (Howard E. Aldrich & Cliff, 2003; Demartino & Barbato, 2003; Eddleston & Powell, 2012; Hughes & Jennings, 2020; Jennifer E. Jennings & Brush, 2013; Jennifer E Jennings & McDougald, 2007). Yet, its significance for understanding the human entrepreneur – her well-being and the sense of fullness which she attains during the active pursuit of venture creation – has been eclipsed from deeper investigation.
This makes it all the more important to closely study family dynamics while gauging an entrepreneur’s experiences of psychological resilience and well-being. From a general phenomenological view (whether Husserlian, Heideggerian, or Gadamerian), experiences of well-being – of fullness, meaning, and virtuous action – are windows through which we come to distil different modes of living, and sources of moral motivation and behaviour (see e.g., Taylor, 1992)(Taylor, 1989). Studying entrepreneurs’ narratives and experiences of well-being in relation to the family is thus a necessary step in exploring and making sense of what moves the entrepreneur and how closely the entrepreneur has aligned their acts of entrepreneurship with their social and personal life more broadly (Berglund, 2007).
The overarching aim of this study is thus to explore the role of the family in entrepreneurs’ experiences of eudaimonic well-being during the early process of venture creation. More specifically, we seek to elucidate the variety of ways in which well-being is experienced and enacted in relation to the family during the active phase of venture creation. Our goal is not a descriptive “what” but rather an analytic “how”. It is essentially interpretive: Making sense of entrepreneurs' feelings, intuitions, and modes of well-being in relation to the sources of family influence.

Following a group of 36 early-stage Scottish and Indian entrepreneurs for a period of two years, we explore, through a series of in-depth narrative-based interviews, how the family influences the well-being experiences of entrepreneurs over time, and how entrepreneurs respond to each source of influence. Our phenomenological approach is somewhere in the span between Husserl’s and Heidegger’s, a point we will return to in the actual paper.

We conclude our study with a constructed theoretical framework and an elaborated discussion regarding the tensions, dilemmas, and opportunities that are faced by entrepreneurs in their relation to, and dealings with, their families. The longitudinal and cross-cultural nature of our dataset allows us to draw brief comparative insights regarding the historical and social significance of our findings.