Systems Approach to Entrepreneurial Success: The Theoretical Discussion on the Significance of Family Factors for Effective Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Successful business activity (equated with entrepreneurial success or business effectiveness for the purposes of this paper) has become a ‘popular’ research area in the recent years, which makes the researchers increasingly willing to explore the issue in a more and more sophisticated manner. Simultaneously, the interdisciplinary approach, which consists in seeking the psychological factor in the broadly understood entrepreneurial behaviours, is becoming particularly alluring. A good example of this is the ongoing expansion of the definitional scope of entrepreneurial success intended to add ‘subjectivism’ to the term. In other words, entrepreneurial success gradually ceases to be operationalized solely with ‘objective categories’, such as the period of a company’s operation, profitability, number of employees, etc., and becomes enriched with the ‘subjective element’, such as the level of satisfaction from fulfilment of the objectives that an entrepreneur pursues, level of business competitiveness or, for instance, the general level of satisfaction from running ones own business. Another example of this (by the way) new trend is seeking psychological determinants of entrepreneurial success, which directs some attention to personality variables. In this respect, the significance of, among other things, traits has been demonstrated; that is, the high level of autonomy, extroversion, the sense of self-efficacy, locus of control, and openness to experiences or the low level of neuroticism. The relevant literature, however, shows little interest in the family aspect. Thus one may safely assume that the role of family factors (such as attachment styles, parental attitudes) in entrepreneurial success is highly underdefined in the literature (if not outright marginalised/neglected). Just a few papers discuss (1) the influence of the presence of a successful entrepreneur in the family on displaying business behaviours; (2) the significance of the lack of the male model in the family, and (3) the implications of an authoritative parenting style for business activity. However, two issues are worth noting: (1) these papers are mainly concerned with analysis of family variables as regards undertaking entrepreneurial activity and not successful business activity. What is more, (2) they do not discuss the systems approach to entrepreneurial success understood as the interaction between parental attitudes displayed by an entrepreneur’s mother and father separately. Taking all this into account, the main objective of this paper has been set to be theoretical deliberation about the significance of exploration of the systems approach to successful business activity for future research.