Mitigating work interference with family by leveraging an entrepreneurial strategic posture

Abstract

This article adds to entrepreneurship research by detailing the mediating role of work-related emotional exhaustion in the connection between the extent to which women entrepreneurs experience work interference with family—defined as the degree to which the quality of their personal lives is compromised by work demands—and the performance of their businesses. It also predicts a buffering role of the entrepreneurial strategic posture of their businesses in this process. Survey data collected among women entrepreneurs in Chile indicate that the depletion of entrepreneurs’ work-related energy resource reservoirs is an important reason that increasing levels of work interference with family diminish business performance. This mediating role of emotional exhaustion is less prominent when they run their businesses entrepreneurially, which might help them find innovative solutions for the negative spillovers of work stress into the family domain. This research therefore reveals a critical challenge for women entrepreneurs who suffer in their personal lives due to pressing work demands: the associated emotional drainage compromises the success of their business endeavors, which eventually can generate even more hardships. This study also shows how women entrepreneurs can address this challenge, that is, by drawing from the novel insights that arise from an entrepreneurial strategic posture.