The role of work-to-venture role conflict on hybrid entrepreneurs’ transition into entrepreneurship

ABSTRACT

Entrepreneurial effort is a process-related phenomenon, where individuals or teams organize and launch a venture to capitalize on identified opportunities. Using role theory as a guide, this study develops a new, theory-based construct associated with hybrid entrepreneurship, which we term as work-to-venture conflict (WVC). WVC reflects how the hybrid entrepreneurship process can create conflict between wage employment and venture-launch roles over time. Using a repeated-measures data collection over 26 weeks using a sample of hybrid entrepreneurs, this study uses growth modeling to test the dynamic nature of WVC and its relationships to wage-related outcomes. We find support for our hypothesized relationships that (a) an increase in startup effort over time for hybrid entrepreneurs is related to increased work-to-venture role conflict, which results in (b) a decrease in job satisfaction and increase in turnover intentions regarding their wage employment. Theoretical contributions and practical considerations associated with these findings are provided.

KEYWORDS:

• Role conflict
• entrepreneur
• hybrid entrepreneurship
• entrepreneurial process

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ A majority of ventures in our longitudinal sample were high-tech, such as Software as a Service (SaaS), Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning/artificial intelligence, manufacturing process improvement, medical device development, and software development. The remaining ventures were comprised of direct product sales (that is, online and/or brick-and-mortar store fronts) or provided specialized services (for example, consulting, photography/videography, microbrewery, to name a few).

² Quadratic slopes were tested for both job satisfaction and turnover intentions, and a linear model provided the best fit (job satisfaction, χ² difference (5) = .03, p = .858; TI, χ² difference (5) = .16, p = .567).