Family enrichment and women entrepreneurial success: the mediating effect of family interference

Abstract

Managing work and family is a topic of continual interest. Drawing on work-family interface (WFI) literatures, we test a model linking family-to-business enrichment and family-to-business interference, directly and indirectly, to the entrepreneurial success of women-owned businesses. We consider two types of enrichment: family instrumental (financial) support and family affective (moral) support. The interference aspect of WFI is depicted by women entrepreneurs’ gender-related personal problems. Due to the non-linear nature of our model (logit), we apply for the first time in the entrepreneurship literature, the Karlson-Holm-Breen (KHB) method, which has recently been developed for testing mediation in such models. In a sample of female entrepreneurs in a stable economic environment, Austria, we found that the interference dimension mediates the relationship between the enrichment components and entrepreneurial success. Specifically, personal problems have a negative effect when family financial support is present and a positive effect when family moral support is experienced. Implications and future research are discussed.