For richer or poorer: The emotional experiences of entrepreneurs’ spouses in the context of venture failure

Abstract

This article explores spousal lived experiences in the broad context of entrepreneurial venture failure, focusing on their emotions, the situations that evoked them and how they were managed. We highlight that there is limited qualitative research on emotions in entrepreneurship, and much of this is focused on the lone entrepreneur. We shift this focus to include an understanding of spousal emotions. Our exploratory inductive study of 13 spouses is critical to building our understanding of entrepreneurship and failure from a relational and socially embedded perspective. Our study illustrates the adaptive functions of distinct emotional responses in shaping how spouses navigate the complexities of loss and transformation following entrepreneurial failure. We articulate the theoretical contributions and delineate the practical implications derived from these findings.