The pervasive effects of family on entrepreneurship: toward a family embeddedness perspective
Section snippets
Executive summary
After decades of debate, scholars now agree that a crucial aspect of entrepreneurship involves the recognition of emerging business opportunities, which are often exploited through the creation of new business ventures. Although research on opportunity emergence and venture creation has grown considerably, very little attention has been paid to how family dynamics affect fundamental entrepreneurial processes. To some extent, this oversight is understandable. After all, business and families are
Research on opportunity and venture emergence: the neglect of family embeddedness
After years of vigorous debate, a growing consensus holds that entrepreneurship can be defined as the process by which people discover and exploit new business opportunities, often through the creation of new business ventures Davidsson and Wiklund, 2001, Shane and Venkataraman, 2000, Timmons, 1999. As noted by Davidsson et al. (2001), for example, the field has converged around the view that entrepreneurship is about emergence, albeit with some scholars emphasizing the emergence of
Sociohistorical changes in the family system: implications for opportunity and venture emergence
In the mid-20th century, “family” usually meant a nuclear two-generational group with parents and children sharing the same household. Few women worked outside the home, children were in school, and, if they worked, contributed their wages to the family purse. Strong ties bound multiple generations together, and limited geographic mobility kept many extended kinship groups in the same or nearby communities. In North America at the beginning of the 21st century, almost everything has changed.
Toward a family embeddedness perspective: implications for entrepreneurship and family business research
During the past two decades, the notion that entrepreneurs are embedded in social relationships has become almost axiomatic in the entrepreneurship literature Aldrich and Zimmer, 1986, Burt, 1992, Larson and Starr, 1993. Rather ironically, however, the embeddedness approach has virtually neglected the one social institution in which all entrepreneurs are embedded—the family. This gap persists in spite of evidence that: family transitions can trigger organizational emergence (Cramton, 1993),
Conclusion
We need more research on how family systems affect opportunity emergence and recognition, the new venture creation decision, and the resource mobilization process. We need to learn more about the role that family characteristics and dynamics play in why, when, and how some people, but not others, identify entrepreneurial opportunities and decide to start business enterprises. In turn, we need to better understand the effects that venture creation can have on family systems. Such research
Acknowledgements
We thank Glen Elder, Guang Guo, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, Kathie Mullan Harris, Maria Haydey, Devereaux Jennings, Linda Renzulli, Ron Rindfuss, Lloyd Steier, and Peter Uhlenberg for their help. The Guest Co-Editors of this Special Issue were especially generous with their time in helping us improve earlier drafts. We are grateful for the financial support provided by the University of Alberta's Centre for Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise as well as the Entrepreneurship and Small Business
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