The ‘exodus’ from family businesses. How non-successor daughters form their entrepreneurial identity in the business families context

Research suggests that business families may favour family members’ ability to act entrepreneurially and convey an entrepreneurial legacy to successors to ensure the continuity of family businesses. Nonetheless, families’ entrepreneurial imprinting can extend beyond successors, as non-successors can also pursue an entrepreneurial path. Little is known, however, about non-successor daughters’ entrepreneurial experiences outside of family businesses. Drawing on the family entrepreneurship field and adopting the identity work theory, this paper investigates non-successor daughters who decided to set up their own enterprises and analyses how they formed their entrepreneurial identities in the business family context. Based on the constructivist grounded theory, we analyse ten life story interviews with non-successor daughters and identify three processes through which they form their entrepreneurial identity: avoiding competition; defending; emancipation. Each process is articulated in three building blocks, i.e. Antecedents, Decision and Outcomes, and shows that daughters’ entrepreneurial identity can take shape through step-by-step processes in which interactions between daughters, business families and family businesses can occur differently, causing positive or negative effects at the individual, family and business level. In these processes, daughters’ identity work ranges from adapting to eluding families’ norms and expectations to forming their own entrepreneurial identity consistent with self-perception.