Coordination tasks and modes of linked lives in entrepreneurial families

The overlap of business and family roles, and how they are linked in entrepreneurial fam-
ilies, requires intergenerational negotiation. Biographical case reconstruction analysis
of 32 narrative interviews of 12 German entrepreneurial families explores what coordination
tasks need to be resolved and how family members negotiate their interlocking lives.
The article finds that entrepreneurial families actively coordinate positions, life phases, and
material transfers by means of a pedagogy of succession, life course evidence analysis, and
entrepreneurial narratives. The article presents two innovations. First, it demonstrates how
these families experience and cope with their linked lives under flexible working conditions
and in multigenerational families. Second, it argues that research on linked lives should shift
from focusing on outcomes to understanding emergence and operations, and it advances
the use of the biographical case reconstruction method for this endeavor.

Stamm, Isabell (2016): Coordination tasks and modes of linked lives in entrepreneurial families. Journal of Marriage and Family 78(4), 939-956.