Coordination Tasks and Negotiation Modes of Linked Lives in Entrepreneurial Families

• Author: Isabell K. Stamm
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12304
• Published date: 01 August 2016
• Date: 01 August 2016

I K. S University of California Berkeley

Coordination Tasks and Negotiation Modes

of Linked Lives in Entrepreneurial Families

The overlap of business and family roles, and

how they are linked in entrepreneurial fam-

ilies, requires intergenerational negotiation.

Biographical case reconstruction analysis

of 32 narrative interviews of 12 German

entrepreneurial families explores what coordi-

nation tasks need to be resolved and how family

members negotiate their interlocking lives.

The article nds that entrepreneurial families

actively coordinate positions, life phases, and

material transfers by means of a pedagogy of

succession, life course evidence analysis, and

entrepreneurial narratives. The article presents

two innovations. First, it demonstrates how

these families experience and cope with their

linked lives under exible working conditions

and in multigenerational families. Second, it

argues that research on linked lives should shift

from focusing on outcomes to understanding

emergence and operations, and it advances

the use of the biographical case reconstruction

method for this endeavor.

Twoyoung men rush to a hotel room where their

father awaits them. They enter a room lit only by

candles. There the father presents each of them a

signet ring bearing the family’s crest. It has been

mere weeks since their youngest brother, who

Department of Sociology, Universityof California,

Berkeley, 865 KinkeadWay #103, Albany, CA 94706

(mail@isabellstamm.de).

This article was edited by Kevin Roy.

KeyWords: family and work, intergenerationalrelations, life

courses, qualitative methods.

had hoped to represent the third generation in

the growing family business, died in an untimely

manner. Still shaken, the Singermayer family

is now seeking comfort and peace of mind on

vacation together. First, the father turns to the

older brother.He asks his son if he could imagine

entering the family business; his son declines.

The elder Singermayer then turns to his younger

son, Sven, who surprises himself by announcing:

“I will try, but I cannot guarantee anything.”

Soon after the vacation, Sven begins training

for the position in the family business that had

been prepared for his late brother. He eventually

becomes CEO of the company and goes on to

serve for more than 40 years. The ritual moment

was a profound experience for Sven that left him

with a lifelong puzzle: Why did he respond the

wayhedid?

This particular case was the starting point

for my understanding that life courses of

entrepreneurial family members are linked more

closely than the concept of linked lives (Elder,

1985, 1994; Elder, Kirkpatrick Johnson, &

Crosnoe, 2003) generally suggests. This central

theme of the life course approach (Dannefer

& Uhlenberg, 1999; Elder et al., 2003; Kohli,

1986, 2007) refers to a simple principle: the

sequence of roles one plays in one’s lifetime

(e.g., child, wife, employee) is intricately inter-

locked with the roles of others (e.g., parents,

husband, employer). Within this web of inter-

dependence, tragic events, health conditions,

and general circumstances leave imprints on all

linked lives (MacMillan & Copher, 2005).

In entrepreneurial families—those which are

collectively engaged in founding and developing

Journal of Marriage and Family 78 (August 2016): 939–956 939

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12304

940 Journal of Marriage and Family

one or multiple businesses, or entrepreneurship

(Ruef, 2010; Shane, 2008)—the intertwining of

family and business creates a specic setting

for generational encounters. The familial status,

professional aspirations, and entrepreneurial

performance of one family member may have

immediate and powerful consequences for the

career choices and lifestyles of other mem-

bers. This pattern of linked lives is unique to

entrepreneurial families, and it makes intergen-

erational negotiations necessary. This article

illuminates these life course dynamics by

investigating two main questions: What do

entrepreneurial family members typically nego-

tiate about (coordination tasks)? Relatedly, how

do they negotiate in order to navigate their

linked lives (negotiation modes)?

L  C F

Research on ownership structures in businesses

(e.g., Faccio & Lang, 2002) has pointed out that

a fairly small group of entrepreneurial families

owns the vast majority of businesses around the

globe: Germany ranks among the nations with

the largest family business population (96%

of the country’s businesses)—more than in the

United States (80%–90%) or the Netherlands

(69%; Family Firm Institute, 2004). Although

most family businesses are small, many large

and publicly traded companies can be classied

as such. Cross-national comparisons, however,

are difcult because of the unsettled debate

about how to dene family business.Forthe

purpose of this study, I dene a family business

broadly as one that is under family inuence

(Massis, Sharma, Chua, & Kotlar, 2012). The

nature of this inuence varies depending on

governance, experience, and culture (Astrachan,

Klein, & Smyrnios, 2002) and over time (D.

Miller, Le Breton-Miller, Lester, & Cannella,

2007).

Despite the economic impact of family busi-

nesses, family scholars have largely ignored the

families involved in them. In their extensive lit-

erature reviews, Jennings, Breitkreuz, and James

(2013) found that between 1985 and 2010, fewer

than 30 articles on business-owning families

were published in English-language family

journals. In line with their ndings, my own lit-

erature review indicates that the current state of

research on this topic is limited and fragmented

at best. Interestingly, family scholars have pri-

marily been attentive to entrepreneurial families

in rural areas (e.g., Salamon & Markan, 1984),

particular historical contexts (e.g., Ruggles,

2011), or immigrant families (e.g., ¸Senyürekli

& Detzner, 2008). They have identied tensions

in interpersonal relationships in couples (Danes

& Lee, 2004), challenges in integrating in-laws

(Marotz-Baden & Mattheis, 1994), role conicts

between parents and children (Cooper, Kidwell,

& Eddleston, 2013), and justice issues between

siblings (Taylor & Norris, 2000).

One stream of research, however, examines

the particularities of entrepreneurial families

from a general life course approach. Bertaux

and Bertaux-Wiame (1981a) found in their

study of French artisan bakers that “the relation

between husband and wife becomes at once a

relation between an artisan and a shopkeeper

who got together as business partners” (p. 169).

King and Elder (1995) characterized members

of multigenerational Iowa farming families as

strongly dependent on one another; in such

families, “work and family roles are interwoven

in social and physical space” (p. 165). Phyllis

Moen (1998) found that “individuals in the

entrepreneurial family have lives that are, more

often than not, linked lives, linked across time

and across generations” (n.p.). A number of

empirical studies have focused on life trajecto-

ries and role transitions within entrepreneurial

families (e.g., Davis & Tagiuri, 1989; Lansberg,

1999; Stavrou & Swiercz, 1998). These largely

unconnected studies suggest that family mem-

bers deliberately coordinate their linked life

courses.

Existing literature alerts us to gendered

pathways into the family project (Ames, Brosi,

& Damiano-Teixeira, 2006). We can sense

a trend from the traditional entrepreneurial

wife (Jimenez, 2009) to female entrepreneurs

and “co-preneurs” facing greater work–life

challenges than their male counterparts (e.g.,

Loscocco & Leicht, 1993). Succeeding females

directly challenge traditional gender attitudes;

they face external and internal legitimization

conicts (e.g., Hamilton, 2006). A study of

linked lives in entrepreneurial families will,

thus, need to be attentive to gender norms as

a precondition for linked live courses and as a

topic in the coordination process.

Within the German-language literature,

largely unavailable to English-speaking audi-

ences, a growing body of qualitative empirical

studies (e.g., Erdmann, 1999; Schäfer, 2007;

Schröder & Schmitt-Rodermund, 2013; Stamm,