For Richer or Poorer: The Emotional Experiences of Entrepreneurs’ Spouses in the Context of Venture Failure
Date
Authors
Singh, Smita
Woodfield, Paul
Corrick, Steven
Ho, Marcus
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Abstract
This article explores spousal lived experiences in the broad context of entrepreneurial venture failure, focusing on their emotions, the situations that evoked them, and how they managed them. We highlight that there is limited qualitative research on emotions in entrepreneurship, and much of this research is focused on the lone entrepreneur. We shift the focus of this emotion research to include an understanding of spousal emotions. Our exploratory inductive study of thirteen spouses is critical to building our understanding of entrepreneurship and failure from a relational and socially embedded perspective. Our study underscores the adaptive functions of distinct emotional responses in shaping how spouses navigate the complexities of loss and transformation following entrepreneurial failure. We articulate the theoretical contributions and delineate the practical implications derived from these findings.Description
Keywords
350704 Entrepreneurship, 440301 Family and household studies, 441009 Sociology of family and relationships, 520403 Learning, motivation and emotion, 3507 Strategy, management and organisational behaviour, 1503 Business and Management, 1505 Marketing, Business & Management, 3505 Human resources and industrial relations, failure, emotions, resilience, spouse, emotional management, cognitive strategies, entrepreneurship, family business, narrative
Source
International Small Business Journal, ISSN: 0266-2426 (Print); 1741-2870 (Online), SAGE Publications.
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Rights statement
© The Author(s) 2026. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).