Spring 1998, Vol. 7, No. 1

Entrepreneurial couples

By Kathy J. Marshack, Ph.D.

Dual-career couples are a phenomenon of the 1970s. Entrepreneurial couples are a sub-group of dual-career couples in that each partner is committed to a meaningful career and to their relationship, but unlike other dual-career couples, one or both members of an entrepreneurial couple are self-employed. In 1969 Rapoport and Rapoport first defined these couples and noted the trend. They said that dual-career couples are a special case of "families in which both husband and wife pursue careers (i.e., jobs which are highly salient personally, have a developmental sequence and require a high degree of commitment)."¹ These authors also predicted that women entering the work force would change the shape of corporate America and family life. Two and a half decades later we are seeing the changes as predicted. For example, half of all law school graduates are women. Women are entering the work force at a younger age, better educated and utilizing day care for younger and younger children. Men are part of this change also. Today's college educated man wants a college educated wife with a career plan. Couples are used to dual incomes and dual-career commitments. They have developed (or aspire to develop) quality lives with all of the trimmings.

If dual-career couples are a phenomenon of the 1970s, entrepreneurial couples may be a phenomenon of the 1990s and leading us into the next century. One of the most rapidly growing groups of the self-employed are women (i.e., sole proprietorships) and couples (i.e., jointly owned sole proprietorships).

Jointly owned sole proprietorships are not necessarily owned by married couples alone.² The designation of jointly owned sole proprietorship is a tax term primarily and connotes two individuals who share ownership of a business. Still the information on jointly owned sole proprietorships is very revealing of the growth in the area of entrepreneurial couple ventures.

According to the Small Business Administration, non-farm jointly owned sole proprietorships are increasing steadily at about 5% a year. In 1985 there were 482,993 jointly owned sole proprietorships, excluding farm businesses in the US. By 1994, the Small Business Administration reported 758,743 jointly owned sole proprietorships. These numbers still may be low, since statistics are not kept by the Small Business Administration on corporations and partnerships run by couples.

Much is being written about leaving corporate life and striking out on one's own. With "downsizing" and the "glass ceiling," career minded couples are realizing that the quality life to which they aspire, may result from an entrepreneurial venture. According to Leon Danco (1975), a business consultant, half of America's gross national product is earned by family firms. And many of these family firms were started by mom and pop. Furthermore, the SBA notes that in 1994 jointly owned sole proprietorships reported $38 million in receipts. These facts make self-employment and entrepreneurship look very appealing to many couples.

Books are entering the market to speak to this growing trend of entrepreneurial couples. There are books to address the communication styles and differences between men and women. There are time management books and an array of time management paraphernalia to make more efficient the days of self-employed couples. There are books on how to choose the right day-care or nanny for one's child, or how to organize a day-care plan for one's company. There are career planning books for those weary mid-life individuals who desire a change of venue. There are books on how to start a small business.

However, entrepreneurial couples don't need any more help learning how to do it faster or more efficiently. They are already masters at this. What I hear in my office as a psychologist, and what I discovered in my research is a cry for help on how to strike a balance in one's life, how to keep life/career priorities straight, how to stay loving and healthy.

Making the most of the entrepreneurial lifestyle

From my clinical experience and research with entrepreneurial couples, I have learned a great deal about how these couples, without any modeling or guidelines, negotiate the stressful daily transitions from home to work and back again. By and large these couples are doing a pretty good job. Most entrepreneurial couples would not live any other way.

They are stressed to be sure; they are facing fatigue; they have marital problems; they feel guilty about the little quality time spent with their children; they make personal compromises in order to get ahead in their careers; they make career compromises in order to keep the family stable. But they also feel as though they are making a real contribution to the community. They are creating a future for their children; they can bring intellectually stimulating conversation to the dinner table; they can afford "dream" vacations; they can be a force politically. The problem is that entrepreneurial couples are not the type of people who like doing a "pretty good job." They are not content with "making do." They are the kind of people who like to excel, or husband and wife would not both be pursuing meaningful, demanding careers. And these are the kind of people who like "having it all." What appears to be true, however, is that entrepreneurial couples are just making do. Because many of these couples have no models to guide them in planning and implementing the entrepreneurial couple life, they tend to follow the outdated models of their parents or grandparents. For example, without thinking, some entrepreneurial couples continue to divide home responsibilities along traditional gender lines Marshack (1994a, 1994b). Women do the laundry, the cooking, the cleaning. Men do the yardwork and auto maintenance. For entrepreneurial couples, this is especially a problem when they also divide work responsibilities along traditional gender lines, not taking into consideration the training and talents of each spouse. For example, some attorney wives are also the office manager for their husband/wife law firm (Epstein, 1971). While most entrepreneurial couples just make do, the purpose of consultation should be to teach these couples to make the most of their entrepreneurial lifestyle. This requires attending to all aspects of the interacting systems that create the lives of entrepreneurial couples, such as the individual, the couple, the business and the extended kin network. Consultants best suited to understand and to intervene in these recursively interacting systems are mental health professionals trained in systems theory.

Entrepreneurial couples: Who are they?

Trish and Kurt are in their early thirties, college educated. Kurt is a district manager for a national company. Trish is an executive for an international corporation. They live in the suburbs in a tri-level "French Cottage" new home with their dog, cat and their twin daughters. They are affluent, own two BMWs, and can afford vacations to Hawaii or Mazatlan. In spite of their success, Trish and Kurt are considering a transition to the entrepreneurial life and have been investigating a variety of options from franchises to ranches.

Many people consider Trish and Kurt as the quintessential representation of the dual-career couple. But this style is only one of many that I will discuss today. Entrepreneurial couples come in many permutations. Just as there are no two people on the planet with the same finger prints, there are no two couples with quite the same work/home style.

What these varied entrepreneurial couples do have in common is that both husband and wife are working full time and they are working at careers that are highly meaningful personally, have a path of advancement, and require a high degree of commitment. Secondly, these are couples who are engaged in developing an enterprise, either as partners in a joint venture, as dual-entrepreneurs or as a solo-enterprise with one spouse supporting the entrepreneurial spouse. Thirdly, the people I will discuss in this paper are real people who have real lives, real successes and real problems. They are either clients or participants in my research.

The major styles of entrepreneurial couple include the solo-entrepreneur with a supportive spouse, the dual-entrepreneurial couple, the copreneurial couple, and even the dual-career couple considering entrepreneurship. I include the dual-career couple considering entrepreneurship because you will undoubtedly counsel with couples in this situation, couples who are not quite decided on their style, such as Trish and Kurt.

Bob and Carol used to work together in their successful nursery and garden supply business, but Bob has since returned to his old employer leaving Carol to manage the business on her own, as a solo-entrepreneur. Bob has become the supportive spouse. He is employed elsewhere, providing emotional support to his wife's business, but not really involved in the day-to-day management and headaches of the business. Carol, on the other hand recognizes her talent as an entrepreneur and is much better suited to running the operation on her own as a sole proprietor.

Another style is called the copreneurial couple like Larry and Fran who for 15 years have worked side by side building their farming enterprises. Copreneurs share ownership, management and responsibility for their business as full-time partners. The term copreneur comes from the blending of the words couple and entrepreneur and was first coined by the husband and wife team of Barnett and Barnett in 1988. Copreneurs are different than dual-entrepreneurs in that they operate a joint venture. One partner may have more of the entrepreneurial spirit than the other partner, but they both are equally committed to the enterprise as owners and managers.

Still another style involves dual-entrepreneurs like Sharon and Dave, who each run separately their respective businesses. Sharon is a realtor and Dave runs several successful small businesses. Dual-entrepreneurs are like solo-entrepreneurs in that each spouse is an entrepreneurial spirit tending to their own sole-proprietorship (or even partnership with a non-family member). They also may function as a support person to their entrepreneurial spouse. What distinguishes dual-entrepreneurial couples from the others is that they each have the entrepreneurial spirit yet they are not in business partnership with their spouses.

There are few couples who fit neatly into one category or another. Chuck for example, owned a multi-million dollar import company 10 years ago when he met Peg, whom he later married. Now Peg heads up a major division of Chuck's company. Chuck and Peg are copreneurs but often operate as dual-entrepreneurs because of the size of their international business. Marv and Frances were each solo-entrepreneurs before they married and merged their respective businesses to become copreneurs. Fred and Eleanor over the years have experimented with all types of entrepreneurship. In some ventures they are copreneurs. Still in others, each operates as an independent dual-entrepreneur. All the while they consider themselves supportive spouses.

What makes an entrepreneurial spirit?

In spite of the multitude of studies on entrepreneurs, psychologists have yet to come up with a reliable instrument to assess the qualities that may lead to entrepreneurship. This has lead some researchers to suggest that types of entrepreneurs may fall along a continuum depending upon the type of business they are in, the current economic climate, personality factors, early childhood, and so on. Others have suggested that the confusion over typing entrepreneurs has come from including small business people in the same classification with entrepreneurs. For example in 1984, Carland, Hoy, Boulton and Carland reviewed the literature on small business owners and entrepreneurs and determined that they are very different. The major differences are that the entrepreneur is innovative and interested in profitability and growth, whereas the small business manager does not engage in innovative marketing practices, and is interested in making an income to support himself and his family.

Most of the research on entrepreneurs has been about men who started their businesses shortly after World War II. As a result they show a consistent profile that may not really reflect the wider variety of entrepreneurs who are entering the marketplace today, such as women and entrepreneurial couples. The profile is that of a hard-working, rebellious, anti-authority man, who came from an impoverished childhood, and who is determined to "make good." He is a loner, works long hours at the expense of marriage and family life. He is insecure, but has a high need for achievement to compensate for the insecurity. He is innovative as opposed to creative. That is, he makes use of creative ideas, even if they are not his own. He is a moderate risk taker, preferring to trust his own skills and judgment over others. He is controlling and thus has difficulty moving his business toward professional management.

More recently two researchers have taken a slightly different approach to developing a typology of entrepreneurs. In a 1991 report, Donckels and Frohlich compared the values and attitudes of entrepreneurs in family owned and non-family owned businesses. Using 85 value indicators taken from the literature on entrepreneurs, they developed a questionnaire and administered it to European business owners. From this study, they discovered four types of entrepreneur. The all-rounder is the versatile, universally responsive, and adaptive entrepreneur. The routineer represents the cautious entrepreneur who is more interested in providing an income for his family than in being innovative and taking risk. The organizer is the administrator and executive type of entrepreneur, applying the rational, analytical, and organizing strengths with empathy. The pioneer is the dynamic, creative entrepreneur. They are innovative, take risks and have vision.

Is entrepreneurship a family affair?

Donckels and Frohlich also found that style of entrepreneurship varies depending upon whether the business is family owned or non-family owned. For example, family business owners are less often pioneers (26.6% of family owned businesses as opposed to 44.6% of non-family owned businesses). The family owned entrepreneurs are more often all-rounders and organizers. As a result family owned businesses are risk aversive and less growth oriented. As well, creativity and innovation are considered less important to entrepreneurs in family owned businesses.

Family businesses are defined by the experts in a variety of ways with a variety of names such as Family Owned Businesses, Family Firms, or Family Businesses. Furthermore, defining the term, family business, can be confusing, since it is a legal identity, a tax identity, a family systems identity, and an organizational identity. Since we are looking at the psychological aspects of working with a family member the following qualifiers should help you define whether or not a business is a family firm. Not all of the qualifiers are required, but the more of them that are representative of the client's situation, the more solidly it can be defined as a family firm.

1. A family business is one that is founded by a family member and is expected to be passed to succeeding generations of the family (even through marriage);
2. Family members own and control the business, as in a closely held corporation;
3. Although there may be many family members working part-time in the business, there is at least one family member who works full-time in a responsible position, other than the founder or entrepreneur;
4. A family member is a spouse, child, parent, sibling or cousin etc., of the founder or officers of the company, whether by birth, adoption or marriage.

There are a number of other ways that other couples have formed a family business as a result of inheriting the business from a parent, or because they work with a sibling, or because they are grooming a child to inherit or buy the business, or because they are providing employment for a variety of extended kinfolk, or because family members are on the board of directors.

It may seem complex enough already to assess whether or not your client is an entrepreneurial spirit, as well as to assess the appropriate category of entrepreneur (i.e., all-rounder, routineer, organizer or pioneer). Now the distinction of family-owned or not is added to the mix. Because the framework for understanding entrepreneurial couples is a holistic one, it is important to be aware of all of the significant elements of the entrepreneurial venture, including the personality characteristics of the husband and wife, the type of business the couple has chosen and the industry they work in, and the influence of their family system upon the marriage and business. The research is showing that those firms who have a strong family influence do function much differently than other entrepreneurial ventures. Therefore, it is important to consider these differences as you consult with entrepreneurial couples helping them design and refine their entrepreneurial marriages.

Assessing the type of entrepreneurial couple

From this review you can see that there are three parts to determining the style of entrepreneurial couple. First, you must determine whether the couple is a solo entrepreneur with a supportive spouse, a dual-entrepreneurial couple, or a copreneurial couple. Second, you must determine if the entrepreneur is an all-rounder, an organizer, a routineer or a pioneer. Third, you must determine whether the business is a family or non-family enterprise.

Looking at the next page you can see that there are twelve basic types of entrepreneurial couple. For solo-entrepreneurs and dual-entrepreneurs there is another distinction to be made, whether the business is family owned or non-family owned. Copreneurs by the very nature of being a committed couple who own, manage and share responsibility for their joint enterprise are considered a family firm. This brings the total to a possible twenty types of entrepreneurial couple!

Copreneurs are different than other dual-career couples

Considering what we know about family systems theory it is not surprising that copreneurs look very different psychologically from other entrepreneurial couples and dual-career couples in general. In my study, I compared copreneurs to the larger category of dual-career couples, which included solo-entrepreneurs and their career-minded supportive spouses, dual-entrepreneurial couples, and dual-career couples who are not self-employed. The findings from my study demonstrate some significant differences between copreneurs and other dual-career couples. Understanding these differences will undoubtedly assist the consultant in better serving these clients.

In the field of family business, there are assumptions about copreneurs, that they represent a new emerging egalitatian style of family business ownership and that they operate in their marriages similarly to dual-career couples. Unfortunatley, there has been little empirical research to support these assumptions. In my research I examined these assumptions by comparing a population of copreneurs and dual-career couples on variables such as sex-role orientation, self concept at work and home, and marital and business partnership equity. The findings indicate that copreneurs and dual-career couples define their work and home boundaries very differently.

By comparing copreneurs and dual-career couples, this study goes beyond the linear research of the past to examine the dynamic interrelationship of the domains of love and work, to really measure the effects of the interaction of family and firm. Specifically, the focus of this study has been to examine how the boundaries between domains are established, and how copreneurs and dual-career couples make the psychological and physical adjustments that are required to transition from one domain to another and back again.

The participants in the study were volunteers who were located through the public listings of the chambers of commerce in two small communities in the state of Washington. A total of 83 copreneurial couples (166 individuals) were contacted and a total of 71 dual-career couples (142 individuals) were contacted using this method in order to create a final sample of 30 copreneurs (60 individuals) and 30 dual-career couples (60 individuals).

Participants received three instruments: (1) the 24-item Personal Attributes Questionnaire (Spence & Helmreich, 1978), a measure of sex-role orientation; (2) the Work-Home Identity Scale (Friedlander, 1990), a measure of self-concept; (3) and a questionnaire designed specifically for the current study, which included both objective and open-ended questions, and which measures boundaries, transitions and stress.

Results from the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) demonstrate that copreneurs are quite traditional in their sex-role orientations while dual-career couples are more androgynous. That is, 80% of the copreneurial husbands espouse a stereotypical masculine sex-role orientation, and 76% of the copreneurial wives espouse a stereotypical feminine sex-role orientation. Dual-career couples, on the other hand, espouse sex-role values that are less stereotypic, and which are more equally distributed among the desirable masculine and the desirable feminine traits, thus contributing to their androgyny.

The differences in these two orientations are demonstrated in the division of household and work responsibilities. Among copreneurial couples, wives handle the bulk of the household responsibilities, leaving only car maintenance and small repairs to the copreneurial husbands, while among dual-career couples these tasks are more equally shared. At work, copreneurial wives handle traditional "women's" work, such as secretarial and bookkeeping functions, while their husbands handle traditional "men's" work, such as equipment maintenance and decision-making (i.e., contract negotiation).

Regardless of the division of labor, both copreneurs and dual-career couples are in agreement that they are satisfied as marital partners and business partners, which indicates that the distribution of work is considered equitable, if not equal. This finding of equity versus equality has been consistently supported in the literature on dual-career couples.

Researchers in the field of dual-career studies have been dismayed at being unable to find evidence of an egalitarian relationship between dual-career couples, in spite of anecdotal evidence. The problem has been that these studies did not compare two distinct populations, as I have done. Dual-career couples certainly appear much more egalitatian than their copreneurial counterparts. While there is still a tendency for dual-career wives to handle more household responsibilities than their husbands, the gap is narrowing. The predominant mode in these households is to share tasks fairly equally.

The popular press has suggested that copreneurs too are establishing a new model of egalitarian marriage. However, this seems to be far from true. Instead of supporting the hypothesis that copreneurs are developing egalitarian relationships, the evidence of this study supports the "invisibility" of family business wives as suggested by Salganicoff (1990). For example, responses from the Work-Home Identity Scale (WHIS) indicate that the husband is the leader and decision maker at work and at home, while the wife is consistently the support person. Husbands work more hours (on the average 60 hours a week) than their wives, leaving management of the household to their wives. However, the wives work as many hours as their dual-career counterparts (on the average 49 hours a week), as well as handle all household duties.

Therefore, one of the ways that copreneurs satisfy the competing demands of love and work is to adhere to traditional models of masculinity and femininity. That is, rather than a conceptual boundary existing between work and home, copreneurs rely on a conceptual boundary based on gender differences to define their roles within the domains of love and work.

Sex-role orientation is not a factor in defining the boundaries of love and work for dual-career couples since their orientations are similarly androgynous. Rather, it is self concept that changes between domains. Dual-career participants are leaders at work. They are focused, formal, task-oriented, active, extroverted and serious. At home they move from the unilateral leader role of work to a more bilateral sharing of power with their spouse. They are more relaxed, informal, person-oriented, introverted and fun. Therefore, while copreneurs rely on a conceptual boundary defined by sex-role orientation, dual-career couples satisfy the competing demands of love and work by shifting their self concepts from a work persona to a home persona.

Helping entrepreneurial couples develop healthy work/home boundaries

When I examined these work/home transitions and boundaries, I found a significant difference between dual-career couples and copreneurs, not in terms of marital or career satisfaction (which are the domains), but in terms of boundary formation. Both dual-career couples and copreneurs are satisfied with their marriages and their career lives, but whereas copreneurs rely on gender differences to construct boundaries between husband and wife, dual-career couples rely on changes in self-concept to construct boundaries between home and work. The copreneurs in my study have strong family values, as do most family firms. In fact, a major reason for satisfaction in their businesses is the opportunity to work with their spouses. However, the adherence to traditional sex-role orientations is limiting in several ways to these couples and to their businesses. Defining work assignments by gender does not allow for the full range of creativity and talent from both the men and the women. Further, planning for succession of the business to the next generation is much easier if a business is organized around talent and commitment rather than sex roles.

Work/home boundaries are much more blurred for copreneurs than they are for other entrepreneurial couples, which may explain why copreneurs rely on gender to define identity within each setting. In order to move away from these limiting gender defined boundaries, the boundaries between work and home should be strengthened. One couple in my study, for example, has clearly defined work/home boundaries because they manage separate divisions of the company and their offices are in separate buildings. Another couple has their desks side by side in a small storeroom/office combination, but the work/home boundaries are clearly defined psychologically. This androgynous couple has set finite rules for their work self concepts and their home self concepts by discussing work issues only in the work setting and home issues only away from work. As well, they are equal decision makers in all major aspects of the business, but they have separate work assignments. At home the same system applies.

This suggestion to strengthen boundaries should not be confused with the outdated recommendation to keep family and firm separated. Beliefs and values are the underpinnings of human behavior and human interaction. The beliefs and values that form a family are quite apparent in the family firm, from the product or service to the organization of the business. And always the family system is dominant as the business is a reflection of, or a metaphor for, the family. Defining boundaries clearly by self concept rather than by sex-role orientation will strengthen these values. In other words, a successful entrepreneurial couple venture depends upon utilizing the talents of both husband and wife, within the most appropriate context for those talents, whether that be home or work or both.

This is an abbreviated version of Dr. Marshak's presentation at the AOOP Conference in January 1998.

References

Barnett, F. & Barnett, S. (1988). Working together: Entrepreneurial couples. Berkeley, CA.: Ten Speed Press.

Carland, J. Hoy, F., Boulton, W., & Carland, J. (1984). Differentiating entrepreneurs from small business owners: A conceptualization. Academy of Management Review, 9(2), 354-359.

Danco, L. (1975). Beyond survival: A business owner's guide for success. Cleveland OH: University Press.

Donckels, R. & Frohlich, E. (1991). Are family businesses really different? European experiences from STRATOS. Family Business Review, 4(2), 149-160.

Epstein, C. (1971). Law partners and marital partners: Strains and solutions in the dual-career family enterprise. Human Relations, 24(6), 549-564.

Friedlander, F. (1990). Work-Home Identity Scale. Unpublished manuscript, The Fielding Insatiate, Santa Barbara, CA.

Marshack, K. (1994a). Copreneurs and dual-career couples: Are they different? Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, 19(1), 71-83.

Marshack, K. (1994b). Love and work: How co-entrepreneurial couples manage the boundaries and transitions in personal relationship and business partnership. Doctoral dissertation. The Fielding Institute, Santa Barbara, CA.

Rapoport, R. & Rapoport, R. (1969). Dual-career families. Middlesex England: Penguin.

Salganicoff, M. (1990). Women in family businesses: Challenges and opportunities. Family Business Review, 3(2), 125-137.

Spence, J. & Helmreich, R. (1978). Masculinity and femininity: Their psychological dimensions, correlates, and antecedents. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

US Small Business Administration. (1997). Facsimile transmittal from the Office of Advocacy. Washington, D.C.

 
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