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

Deborah H. Francis and William R. Sandberg

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 2000, vol. 25, issue 2, 5-26

Abstract: 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.

Date: 2000
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/104225870002500201 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:entthe:v:25:y:2000:i:2:p:5-26

DOI: 10.1177/104225870002500201

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().