Founder or Successor? A Family Embeddedness Perspective on the Entry Mode in Entrepreneurship for Offspring in Enterprising Families.

Parents’ entrepreneurship plays a fundamental role in guiding pupils towards an entrepreneurial career. However, less is known about the specific mechanisms explaining why parents’ entrepreneurship leads to different entry modes into entrepreneurship. To address this gap, we unpack the mechanisms through which parent entrepreneurs influences their children’s intentions to succeed in family business rather than founding their own venture. We consider three dimensions of the pupils’ relationship with the family enterprise (i.e., affective commitment and normative commitment, and parents performance in entrepreneurship) and five dimensions of support from the enterprising family (i.e., instrumental assistance, career-related modeling, verbal encouragement, and emotional support). Drawing on a sample of 45,502 potential successors, we find that the affective and normative commitment to the family enterprise increases the likelihood that pupils prefer succession rather than founding, whereas support from the enterprising family in form of instrumental assistance and verbal encouragement have the opposite effect.