Friendship within Entrepreneurial Teams and its Association with Team and Venture Performance

This article explores friendship within the entrepreneurial team with particular attention to its association with the team's behavior and the performance of the venture. Building on a foundation in the literatures on friendship, entrepreneurial teams, and strategic decisions, we propose 13 suc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Entrepreneurship theory and practice 2000-12, Vol.25 (2), p.5-26
Main Authors: Francis, Deborah H., Sandberg, William R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Business success
Cooperation
Economic aspects
Economic performance
Effects
Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurship
Friendship
Human acts
Human behavior
Management
Management research
Methods
Organizational behavior
Organizations
Participatory management
Professional relationships
Strategic behaviour
Strategic management
Teams
Teamwork
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Summary:This article explores friendship within the entrepreneurial team with particular attention to its association with the team's behavior and the performance of the venture. Building on a foundation in the literatures on friendship, entrepreneurial teams, and strategic decisions, we propose 13 such relationships. Friendship facilitates the formation of management teams for new ventures, thereby improving their early performance. As the entrepreneurial team continues to function, friendship is conducive to decision-making processes that enhance the team's effectiveness in solving “wicked” problems and ultimately improve the venture's performance. Friendships, under different circumstances, may exert either positive or negative influences on turnover within the entrepreneurial team, and those influences may improve or impair the venture's performance. (At the same time, behavior within the team or events in the venture's development may affect friendships within the team.) Finally we develop and discuss several implications of our propositions for research and practice in entrepreneurship. We point out methodological considerations and directions for future research that would address these implications.
ISSN:1042-2587
1540-6520
DOI:10.1177/104225870002500201