Principal Topic:

During the last decade entrepreneurial teams have gained increased attention among entrepreneurship scholars. Interestingly, entrepreneurial teams composed of spousal couples constitute the most common type of entrepreneurial team (Ruef, 2010; Hellerstedt, 2009). One reason for this strong prevalence of spousal teams is that the spousal couple is the focal point of any family system and is characterized by mutual affinity, and trust—characteristics considered as beneficial for entrepreneurial team formation (Ruef, 2010). However, relational and affective conflicts within teams have been argued to be detrimental to venture performance (Ensley et al 2002). Therefore, it is interesting to consider that spousal couples often go through challenging periods in terms of relational conflicts and the intensity of these conflicts may depend on the family stage spousal couples find themselves (Pollmann-Schult, 2014). To build our hypotheses, we build on literatures on entrepreneurial teams (Blatt, 2009), entrepreneurs’ relational embeddedness (Granovetter, 1992) and family embeddedness (Aldrich & Cliff, 2003).

Method:

Our empirical setting is based on data provided by Statistics Sweden and requires the matching of several databases: The first database is LISA – a database comprising all legal residents of Sweden. The second database is RAMS which provides yearly data on all registered firms. Finally, the multi-generational database provides us with information on spousal couples. By linking individuals to their families as well as through constructing links between the firm-level database, RAMS, and the individual-level database, LISA, we are able to identify businesses run by spousal partners. Following Hill et al (2011) we classify the family life stages according to individuals’ age and existence of children and their age.

Results and Implications:

With our research we contribute to the literatures on entrepreneurial teams (Blatt, 2009), research on entrepreneurs’ relational embeddedness (Granovetter, 1992) and family embeddedness (Aldrich & Cliff, 2003). We contribute to the entrepreneurial team literature by showing that the spousal relationship is influenced by relational dynamics such as separation and family stage. We further contribute to the strand of entrepreneurs’ relational embeddedness by showing that specific relational resources accrue due to the spouses’ relational embeddedness, which may change over family stage and may be disrupted by relational conflicts.