When Family Helps Business: How Support Reduces Work Strain for Women Entrepreneurs

What is it about?

This study investigates how family-to-business support—the practical and emotional assistance that family members provide to business-owning women—reduces the extent to which work interferes with family life. Drawing on Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, it explains that women entrepreneurs often face competing demands across work and family domains, which can drain emotional energy and lead to work-related exhaustion. This exhaustion, in turn, increases work-to-family conflict, making it harder to maintain balance and satisfaction in both areas. Using data from women entrepreneurs in Argentina, the study finds that strong family-to-business support reduces emotional exhaustion, helping preserve the psychological resources needed to balance work and family roles. When family members assist in operations or provide emotional support, women face less strain and prevent work demands from spilling into home life. This protective effect is stronger among entrepreneurs with a clear entrepreneurial orientation—proactive, innovative, and risk-taking in pursuing opportunities. By linking family, personal, and strategic factors in a unified model, the study highlights how family support and entrepreneurial orientation jointly protect women entrepreneurs from resource depletion and work-family imbalance. These findings suggest that success in women-led ventures depends not only on business skill but also on relational and psychological supports that sustain energy and harmony across life domains.

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Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This study is unique in showing how family-to-business support indirectly reduces work-to-family conflict by lowering emotional exhaustion, and how this resource-restoring process is amplified by entrepreneurial orientation. It advances COR theory by illustrating that resource gain processes across domains—family and work—can reinforce each other, allowing women entrepreneurs to maintain emotional balance while pursuing business growth. It is also timely, as women entrepreneurs increasingly juggle overlapping professional and personal responsibilities amid heightened economic uncertainty, particularly in developing contexts such as Argentina. The research underscores the importance of supportive family involvement and strategic clarity in preventing burnout and promoting well-being. For policymakers and entrepreneurial networks, it offers actionable guidance on fostering family engagement and cultivating entrepreneurial mindsets that sustain both business success and life satisfaction.