Life in the Family Circle

Volume 4 Number 3 1989

LIFE IN THE FAMILY CIRCLE

by Amy R. Lyman

University of California, USA

Family business women's interactions with family members dominate their personal and professional lives, significantly influencing the depth and breadth of activities in

which they engage.

For many women, going to work means travelling to a workplace away from home, receiving a pay cheque based on

position and performance, and participating in a setting in which co-workers establish and reinforce norms for behaviour. Conversations about people and projects help to communicate expectations about proper behaviour by letting everyone know where the boundaries lie and what the consequences are if the boundaries are challenged. These activities occur in settings in which family issues and concerns take a back seat to workplace priorities.

Women who work in family businesses operate in a very different setting. Their work may involve travel to a workplace away from home, but it is not away from family. Pay cheques may be non-existent when the business is small. Women who define their work as a contribution to the family may continue to work for no pay after the business

is financially stable. For those who are paid, variations may reflect intrafamilial issues more then they do professional competence. And, norms about behaviour are established and reinforced by family members who may also be co-workers. Personal family issues become involved in workplace conversations, and work often gets taken home — whether as a discussion over dinner or as brainstorming on weekends with parents, siblings, or children.

Comments about life in a family business reflect the intensity of living with or near and working with the same people. At work, you see family members. At home, you see family members. The family name is on the product and your grandfather's picture hangs in the boardroom. Family bonds are carried over into work roles, and the quality of work relationships and family interaction patterns influence each other. Thus, for family business members, personal and professional relationships may become indistinguishable.

This article explores women's personal and professional interactions with family and non-family members. Using data collected during telephone and face-to-face interviews, it examines the interpersonal networks of women in family business and non-family business. The number of family and non-family individuals with whom these women are involved in three types of interactions —

This article is reprinted from Family Business Review, Vol. 1 No. 4, 1988. Family Business Review is published quarterly by Jossey-Bass Inc., 350 Sansome Street, San Fransisco, CA 94104, USA, and is sponsored by the Family Firm Institute, Johnstown, NY. Subscriptions are available on a calendar year basis at the rate of US$76.00 for institutions, agencies and libraries, or USS48.00 for individuals. Orders may also be mailed to Jossey-Bass Ltd., 28 Banner Street, London EC1Y 8QE. 11

WOMEN IN MANAGEMENT REVIEW & ABSTRACTS

personal, professional, and blended personal-professional — is presented. The impact that these patterns of interaction have on the personal and professional behaviour of family business and non-family business women is then explored, with stories and anecdotes collected during interviews and supporting information from relevant studies.

A brief background of the issues involved in the study of interpersonal networks, women's roles in networks, and their implications for women's family business participation is presented. Questions about the influence of life in a family business on women's personal and professional development are raised through a discussion of the research findings. Finally, the implications of this research for further work with family business members are presented.

Background Studies of interpersonal networks have been used to explore immigrant integration into established communities, the transfer of new technologies into professional groups, the behaviour of closed societies, and changes in family and gender role behaviour[l-4]. These data reveal unique qualities of both individual and collective experiences. For this study, interpersonal networks are defined by the combination of immediate and extended family, friends and associates with whom significant interaction, as defined by each respondent, occurs. Answers to specific questions about personal and professional interactions were used to develop a picture of each respondent's network.

The characteristics of an interpersonal network reveal much interesting information. The size indicates the number of people on whom a person can rely for advice, support, and information, while the composition indicates the variety of the advice, support, and information that a person can receive. Network members, working in concert with each other or individually, act as boundary guides, establishing and reinforcing norms for appropriate behaviour. Network members also apply the appropriate sanctions if an individual's actions become inconsistent with group expectations. Many studies of interpersonal networks confirm that it is through interactions with network members that individuals experience the boundaries within which their behaviour will be accepted [4-9].

While a person's network members may come from a range of sources, interpersonal

networks collectively adhere to the following characteristics: interpersonal networks are inbred; members are inbred; members control the selection and initiation of new members. Members participate in the design and maintenance of a common culture — the network norms. Within networks, individuals anticipate and adjust to network-defined social constraints. Network members prevent one another from moving away from group norms and inhibit the introduction of dissimilar ideas into the group, thereby maintaining a certain degree of homogeneity among members. Finally, interactions among network members provide role support and identity confirmation[2-4, 7, 8, 10]. While these characteristics apply broadly to all interpersonal networks, the size and composition of the particular network influences the ways in which individual members experience these characteristics.

A WOMAN IS ASSUMED TO BE ALWAYS

AVAILABLE AND WILLING TO LISTEN

Different roles held by network members reflect a number of social and cultural factors. Women's roles within networks are influenced by traditional expectations of women's family and work responsibilities. This influence translates into the following characteristics. A woman is expected to be an emotional specialist who provides comfort and support to other network members. A women is assumed to be always available and willing to listen. Women are responsible for responding, but they have no legitimate authority to question or challenge. Women receive rewards for service but not for independent action, eliciting the traditional sex role orientation and neutralising the task orientation. Women are typecast as nurturers who are expected to be non-critical and accepting of others[5, 7, 11-14].

The ways in which these two sets of characteristics are played out combine with the network environment that discourages deviance from traditional standards. In addition, the dynamics of family business life add a unique twist to the experiences that family business women face.

Discussions and interaction with family business and non-family business women made obvious the significant influence that 12


family and friends had on the daily activities of these women. The impact of this influence and its links with participation in a family or non-family business could be explored by documenting the size and composition of these women's networks. Following this documentation, an exploration of the consequences of interactions within a network dominated by the presence of family or non-family members could be completed.

Hypothesis Development The assumptions driving the study reported here were that family business women would be involved with networks that were smaller in size and more dominated by family members than the networks of their peers in non-family businesses. The placement of family business women in quadrant 1 of Table I and of non-family business women in quadrant 4 represents expectations of how these assumptions would be reflected in network structures.

Women's comments about the network-imposed boundaries that they had experienced led to the hypotheses that placement in quadrant 1 narrows the options from which life-style choices can be made and that personal and professional activities are dictated by family-defined gender roles. Gender roles, which are defined within family systems by a combination of historial events and current role behaviour, are bound by psychological and cultural expectations that define the responsibilities and obligations of male and female family members[14, 15]. Studies of the impact that family-dominated networks have on the continuation of traditional gender roles are consistent with the experience of the participants in this study.

Table I. Interpersonal Network Characteristics

Size Composition

Family dominated

Non-family dominated

Small

1FB Women

3

Large

2

4NFB Women

Note: FB = family business; NFB = non-family business. Relationship types were determined by responses to specific questions.

Elizabeth Bott[4] explored family influence on gender role behaviour and found that the family members in an individual's network promoted family traditions and affected the success with which new behaviours could be integrated into an existing set of activities. Her attention to this issue came from a desire to understand changes in the conjugal-role patterns of married couples. She found a direct relationship between the segregation of conjugal roles and interaction with kin. The greater the level of interaction with family, the more likely a couple was to maintain its traditional family-defined gender roles. She concluded that, as a group, network members exert consistent informal pressure on one another to conform to group norms. One norm — to keep in touch — ensures contact sufficient to perpetuate the group's ability to reinforce its norms continuously[4, p. 60].

WITHIN THE FAMILY BUSINESS, THE LOSS OF ANY FAMILY MEMBER

CHALLENGES THE INTEGRITY OF THIS FUSED PERSONAL AND

ECONOMIC SYSTEM

Robert Bell[16] drew implications from Bott's work for an assessment of kin influence on women's gender role behaviour. Bell reported that women have more involvement with kin than men do; the maintenance of kinship ties and the arrangements for their continuation are thought to be the special province of women[16, p. 144]. Responsibility for the family unit and family interactions makes a woman's rejection of kin influence risky, both personally and for the group. Any deviations by women from their family- and network-defined roles would compel all members to readjust their own roles.

The dilemma that Bell[16] identified is compounded by membership in a family business. Kepner[17, p. 68] states that family business members may find individuation harder to achieve than non-family business members do. Attempts to separate from the family are resisted, because the movement of one member outside the boundaries of the family system requires all other members to readjust. Within the family business, the loss of any family member challenges the integrity of this fused personal and economic system.

Addressing the other end of the continuum, Mark Granoveter[8] documented the importance of heterogeneous network links — 13


contacts with people different from oneself — to the introduction of new ideas into relatively closed networks. People of diverse backgrounds bring opportunities to explore non-traditional behaviours, for such people are likely to interact in circles outside the dominant norms set by the immediate network. Information about behaviour that occurs in other groups can be an important source of data about alternative role patterns in which individuals can engage[8, p. 137].

For family business members, interaction with individuals whose behaviours differ from those of family group members may be essential to the pursuit of personal and professional life-style changes. Yet, family business families, characterised as more intensely interactive than non-family business families, may rely on the maintenance of a close-knit family unit to support the family business[18].

FAMILY BUSINESS FAMILIES... MAY RELY ON THE MAINTENANCE

OF A CLOSE-KNIT FAMILY TO SUPPORT THE BUSINESS

There is great potential for conflict between an individual's desire to explore change opportunities within a diverse set of options and a family group's desire for similarity to maintain cohesion. The conflict may be felt most clearly by family business women when traditional family roles requiring the maintenance of family ties are carried over into their business roles. Under this hypothesis, their pursuit of personal and professional opportunities will be guided by family members in the family-dominated network, whose interests will override any non-traditional aspirations. The composition of a woman's network may indicate the strength with which traditional gender roles will be reinforced or opportunities to explore non-traditional options will be supported.

The Research Process Discussions with family business and non-family business women about their personal and professional interactions provided background information for this study. Family business women described contact with family at work as a necessity and seldom mentioned interaction with non-family. In some cases, interaction with non-family was actively

discouraged. One women who indicated that she thought it beneficial to talk with non-family employees of the business said that her father "used to get pretty upset with me when he'd find out I was asking the employees for ideas. I did stay within the business, but my dad didn't even like that. He thought we should just talk with family!' Another family business woman indicated a sense of doubt about the interest of non-family friends in her work activity: "Talking about the family business isn't something that everyone can relate to, so most of the time I'm quiet about it. Besides, I can always talk with my family about work issues!' For many reasons, these women did not rely on non-family for business-related advice or conversation.

For non-family business women, conversations that crosed from home to work and back seemed rare. A number of non-family business women indicated that they consciously worked to separate family interactions from work interactions, believing that their personal sanity and professional progress would be enhanced by the separation.

The implications of this anecdotal information were pursued during interviews that used a standardised set of fixed alternative and open-ended questions[19]. Burt and Minor[6, p. 78] found that, when the names of individuals involved in interactions were sought, questions about behaviour provided more consistent and complete sets of names than questions about categories of relations. Therefore, questions about routine interactions and about personal and professional situations in which a person's advice or support might be sought were asked. Two groups of women, one consisting of women who worked in family businesses (A7 = 39), the other of women who worked in non-family businesses (N = 34), participated in telephone interviews. Each interview took approximately one hour. The women were selected from a number of sources, including the Philadelphia Women's Yellow Pages (a directory of women-owned businesses), women's professional organisations, and recommendations from friends and colleagues.

Seventy-one of the women who were interviewed were white, and two were Asian. The homogeneity of race was specifically sought, for differences in network composition and family characteristics are linked to racial and cultural interaction patterns that were not explored in this study. No significant differences in age, income, employment status, work activities, living situation, neighbourhood 14


characteristics, or location of home were evident. Previous research had identified these characteristics as factors that could influence the size and composition of networks. As Tables II and III show[3, 7, 20] there were differences for two characteristics, relationship status and the level of formal education completed. When the women were grouped by involvement in a partner relationship (married, remarried, or cohabiting; single, "divorced, widowed, or separated), the relationship status differences disappear. Yet, because relationship status can affect the composition of networks, the potential impact of this characteristic was assessed during data analysis. Similarly, the impact of educational attainment was considered during data analysis. No significant differences in network size or composition could be attributed to either characteristic; membership in a family or non-family business outweighed any influence exerted by either factor. The comparison of two similar populations provided documentation on network size and composition and yielded a "relative-to-what" set of information that could be used to discuss the findings.

Table II. Relationship Status

Status Group

FB NFB

Single

6 3

Married

23 14

Divorced

6 11

Second

3 6

Other

6 4

Note: FB = family business; NFB = non-family business. Data were tested for significance using the Wilcoxon Two-Sample Test (also called the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test) for non-parametric groups. Results are significant at the p<0.05 level.

Table III. Educational Attainment

Level Group

FB NFB

High school

7 1

Some college

13 6

College

11 15

Postgraduate

work

8 12

Note: FB = family business; NFB = non-family business. Data were tested for significance using the Wilcoxon Two-Sample Test (also called the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test) for non-parametric groups. Results are significant at the P<0.05 level.

The extent of each woman's involvement with family and non-family members, calculated from responses to specific questions, indicated where and under what circumstances interactions occurred. Face-to-face follow-up interviews with five members of each group were used to discuss the implications of network interaction activity. Participants in these interviews were selected to represent various combinations of age, education, and relationship status that had been found in the total population. The family business women included two in their late twenties, single, college graduates; one in her early thirties, married, a high school graduate; one in her early thirties, married, a college graduate; and one in her mid-forties, divorced, a college graduate. The non-family business women included two in their early forties, divorced, college graduates; two in their early forties, married, who had done postgraduate work; and one in her early fifties, divorced, a high school graduate. The telephone and follow-up interviews were conducted within a period of six months. All the participants lived in the Philadelphia area.

Findings The data indicated that the women who worked in family businesses lived in close-knit family-dominated network groups in which personal and overlapping personal-professional relationships were the most common. The networks of non-family business women were significantly larger than those of their peers in family businesses, and their overall pattern of interaction with network members reflected a more balanced set of personal, personal-professional, and professional relationships.

The networks of the family business women contained an average of eight members; significantly more members belonged to the family than did not (4.3 family versus 3.4 non-family). Within the three relationship types that were assessed — personal, personal-professional, and professional — personal relationships were the most numerous, blended personal-professional relationships followed, and professional relationships were at a minimum. Table IV presents the data. Family business women relied on significantly more family than non-family network members for both personal and personal-professional relationships. While their strictly professional relationships involved more non-family than family members, the low incidence of such interactions muted the impact of the non-family voice within the total set of interactions. 15


Table IV. Network Size by Group and Relationship Type

Type Group

FB

NFB

Personal

F NF Total F NF Total

1.8 1.6 3.4 1.8 2.6 4.4

Personal Professional


2.1 0.8 2.9 1.6 1.5 3.1

Professional


0.36 0.97 1.33 0.03

4.1 4.13

Total

F 4.3 NF 3.4 Total 7.7 F 3.4 NF 8.2 Total 11.6

Note: FB - Family business; NFB = non-family business; F = family member; NF = non-family member. Relationship types were determined by responses to specific questions. There is no overlap of membership in relationship type categories. Data were tested for significance using the Wilcoxon Two-Sample Test (also called the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test) for non-parametric groups. Results are significant at the p< 0.05 level.

Family business women referred to their personal family relationships, established and maintained within the norms of the family group, as "the way it is". One women said, "We are always together. There is no way around it. You almost don't notice it!' The non-family relationships that these women maintained were often with employees of the family business or members of other family businesses. Thus, even when a non-family individual was the person of choice in a relationship, she or he either was aware of the specific family system and family norms that pervaded the family and family business life or was a member of another family business and thus likely to be experiencing a similar situation.

As one women said, "It's very strange that most of my girlfriends are involved in family businesses. Isn't that strange? We always talk about it [the family], always!' The involvement of these non-family network members in their own close-knit, family-dominated networks or in the woman's own family business placed significant constraints on their ability or willingness to contribute non-traditional information in interactions.

In contrast, the non-family business women reported an average of 12 members in their interpersonal networks, and a significantly larger portion were non-family members (3.4 family versus 8.2 non-family). These women reported relatively similar numbers of solely personal and solely professional relationships and a smaller number of blended personal-professional relationships. They relied very little on family for professional interaction

either in a mixed personal-professional relationship or in a solely professional relationship.

The non-family business women faced a different set of constraints, which were related not to the overall composition of their networks but to the way in which they used their network members. The composition reflects their interaction with non-family members at the workplace and with family members at home or away from the workplace. Many non-family business women indicated that their work was of little interest to family members, that it could not be enhanced by interaction with family members, or that it intruded into the serenity of family life and was thus best left at the workplace.

Their professional interactions with non-family members elicited different comments. Many non-family business women spoke of the conscious selection of the most appropriate non-family friend for consultation as determined by the situation at hand. These women also spoke of relying on themselves to make the final decisions in their professional lives. Such phrases as "I will weigh their [non-family professional] opinions, but I am responsible for myself, "I would deliberately select a group of business associates to plan my career move", "I would talk with different people for different issues", "If I am unsure, I will talk with another person in my field but not in my business", and "During the last six years, I have learned to be totally responsible for myself, reflect the practice of these women to call on a variety of resources as needed and to assume responsibility for their final decisions. The resulting picture is very different 16


from that of the family business women, who often commented on their isolation from other professional women and on their envelopment in their family business lives. That these comments were based on fact is reflected by the size and composition of their interpersonal networks. They were in fact isolated from other professionals, both women and men, and they were in fact enveloped by the family business lives. The combination of isolation and envelopment made it especially difficult for them to pursue and maintain contacts outside their family circle, and it inhibited the development of business and ownership identities independent of family roles.

Implications Interpersonal networks provide stability and guidance for personal and professional interactions. The stability is often balanced by the diversity developed through the cross-fertilisation of ideas that can take place among network members from diverse backgrounds. The balance between stability and diversity can make an individual's network a safe place in which to explore new ideas and behaviours, while the history of member interaction provides guidance and support.

For family business women, guidance and support often come from family members. Thus, family relationships in which patterns of behaviour have been tested, accepted, and often rigidly adhered to, are the stable base on which other relationships are developed. The relatively homogeneous history of the family serves as the backdrop for network activity; kin domination of interaction patterns leads to the development of broad consensus regarding values and norms[20, p. 84]. The multiple links through which opinions are shared — personal and professional ties linked through the family — pressure all members of the network to conform to group standards.

Women may be especially susceptible to the influence of kin on their behaviour, because the normative obligation to keep in touch with kin falls more heavily on women than it does on men [7, p. 92]. Women serve as passive bearers of tradition and family history. They are expected to pass this historical knowledge on to the next generation through their words and actions.

During a discussion about her contact with family members in the family business, one woman stated, "If it weren't for the business, I wouldn't have as much contact with him [an uncle with whom she did not get along]!'

Another women said, "I think I would get along with my family better if I saw them less". A third commented, "You would have to know me to know that the family is everything. I do everything for the family".

Trying to explain the intricacies of working with family members led another woman to comment that, "our family boundaries are really bad. We're all overextended into the personal lives of one another. I think other families have a tendency to be a little more separated". Many family business women echoed these sentiments. Some women viewed the opportunity to work with family as a positive factor; others saw it as a negative. Yet, regardless of how they viewed the opportunity, the influence of family members and family norms guided their behaviour.

"OUR FAMILY BOUNDARIES ARE REALLY BAD. WE'RE ALL

OVEREXTENDED INTO THE PERSONAL LIVES OF ONE ANOTHER"

One woman who felt particularly stressed by her work situation commented on the strain that working with her husband and brother-in-law had placed on her marriage and professional aspirations. Her own and her husband's families had long histories of work in this field, and the combination of this expertise had at first been attractive. But, during a conversation about her work, she expressed reservations about working with family members. "The other friends I have — most of them are both [husband and wife] working two different jobs, two different careers in two different fields, which is a lot more normal. I think it's a little weird to be married to someone in your same field. It sets up tremendous competition". She said that her ideal work situation would be in a position similar to her current job but with a significant twist: she wanted to be in control of her professional life and not to feel the obligation to support her husband both in their marriage and in his work, in many ways in a secondary role. She did not think that her husband truly saw their business as a joint venture, although he spoke of it to others as a joint operation. Her desire to be an equal partner in the workplace did not fit well with her husband's traditional belief that women were supporters, not leaders. She knew other couples in which the woman and the man worked in different 17


fields, and she thought that type of arrangement might "allow for a saner life-style".

A look at her network indicates the difficulty that she may face while trying to pursue an alternative work arrangement. Her network is composed of her husband, her parents, and two other women — one who works in her own fourth-generation family business and one who works in a second-generation family business; both women work with their husbands, and both work in the same field as hers. Of the five people whom she indicated she would call on for personal and professional advice, support, and information, three are family members, while the other two are women in their own family businesses with the exact same set-up as hers. The influence of her family is pervasive, as is its acceptance of the current pattern of family interactions. Her thoughts about pursuing a "saner life-style" are likely to remain just thoughts unless she moves outside her family circle for support. The "insanity" of her current life-style, which she defined as coming from the intense pressure imposed on her by family members to abandon her individual professional aspirations and fill a traditional role of deference to male family members, will not change of its own accord. The members of her network reinforce behaviours that they collectively know how to support. Without an infusion of new knowledge — that is, without alternatives to current thought and practice — her network members will move forward in accordance with their collective experience.

Non-family business women faced different issues, which had different benefits and costs. Financial independence and the development of a career outside the boundaries of family influenced their process of separating from the family group. One women who spoke at great length about her process of separating from family expectations of how she was to live her life said, "I choose to live away from my relatives. It is important for me to see them, but I don't want to live near them. I depend on other women I know [who own their own business] for support with job problems!'

Another women said, "I need to trust my own judgement — it's good. My father is glad to see me happy, but even he would still like me to be five". She continued, "When you are growing up, that sets the stage for you — what they [family] transfer to you. Then you go out into the world and see yourself in terms of how you were raised — you can distort other people's messages. If you don't resolve the problems, you're going to make the same

mistakes. Now I don't go to my father directly for support — I wouldn't want him to worry".

Many non-family business women echoed this woman's recollection of a struggle to separate from family. Their stories of opportunities to separate included both geographic moves away from family and economic pursuits outside family control. There were no stories of easy separation from family, but there were many stories of successful separation. Returning to the family and re-establishing membership within a series of adult-to-adult interactions enabled these women to have independence from and interaction with family members.

. . .A CAREER WITHIN THE FAMILY BUSINESS IS NOT LIKELY TO CREATE INDEPENDENCE, OPPORTUNITIES FOR SEPARATION OR THE RENEGOTIATION

OF FAMILY MEMBERSHIP

The financial success of family business women may equal or surpass that of non-family business women, but a career within the family business is not likely to create independence, opportunities for separation, or the renegotiation of family membership. The family system has been described as an entity that "lives as long as interaction is taking place and only dies when it ceases"[l, p. 104]. For this reason, a family business woman may find it difficult to decrease her level of involvement in the family events that are a part of her family business participation. The family system may regard a reduction in her involvement as a threat to its continued existence.

A woman's search for non-family network members who could expose her to non-traditional patterns of personal and professional behaviour may signal the beginnings of a separation process for her. Such a search involves a powerful challenge to a well-established system of social and economic activity. The mere hint of this challenge, which the family can perceive as a threat to its existence, will probably elicit pressure to preserve the status quo, keep interactions within the family unit, and push contact with non-family members to the periphery.

The size and composition of the networks discussed here fall within the range of normality presented in many studies, yet the two groups of women are clustered at opposite 18


ends of this normal range. Their experience of network influence, as presented in their own words, clearly illustrates that differences in size and composition influence their lives in very distinct ways. This fact raises an interesting question about the factors that have contributed to the definition of normal network size and composition. There may be quite distinct characteristics of networks in the normal range that contribute to unique personal and professional experiences worthy of study. My research suggests that membership in a family or non-family business could be added to the list of characteristics (such as race, sex, age, education, relationship status, neighbourhood) traditionally used to assess the implications of differences in network size and composition.

Practitioners who work with family business women may benefit from assessing the size and composition of their clients' networks. Excellent advice provided in one-on-one sessions or superior strategic plans developed to support family business growth and diversification can be ignored when traditional family values and network-imposed limitations enter the picture. An awareness of the influence of network members on change activities could lead practitioners to design strategies for change that challenge network norms appropriately without mobilising resistance within the network system as a whole. The degree to which resistance to change is an inherent part of the family unit requires that attention be paid to the subtleties of network resistance and the manner in which change strategies are promoted.

Conclusion and Questions Family business women work and live within a set of family-dominated homogeneous relationships. Their networks specify the type and variety of interactions that they may have, limit their ability to pursue and test new ideas, and prevent each individual from seeing the network as the source of limitations. Little room is available for the development of non-traditional patterns of interaction. Personal or professional life-style alternatives may not be pursued. The family business woman may never know that her choice of alternatives is restricted by her participation in a close-knit, family-dominated network.

Many women who took part in this study described the costs associated with membership in a homogeneous network. The role of relationships with non-family members in the lives of these women was minimal, and

thus a very important release from the pressures of participation in an intense family-dominated network was not available. These women either did not pursue or did not fully utilise friendship ties that could widen their field of choice, increase their flexibility in social arrangements, and afford escape from the demands of family. Maintaining very few friendship ties with non-family members, family business women are literally living in a pressure cooker. Opportunities to explore non-traditional behaviour will not be available to these women to the degree that non-family business women experience.

MAINTAINING VERY FEW FRIENDSHIP TIES WITH NON-

FAMILY MEMBERS, FAMILY BUSINESS WOMEN ARE LITERALLY

LIVING IN A PRESSURE COOKER

This limitation will restrict the diversity of behaviours in which a family business woman can choose to engage at the same time that in reinforces the stability and predictability of her workplace interactions. In an environment in which the option of alternative behaviours is unknown, the consequences of living and working within a homogeneous network may not present dilemmas. But, in the environment faced by the women represented in this study, where examples of alternative behaviours are readily available and gender role boundaries are becoming more permeable, the limitations imposed by family-defined norms can lead to frustration and the emotionally charged pursuit of change. The stability and predictability of a homogeneous network are not attributes to be dismissed, for in turbulent times these attributes can be true blessings. But, the limitations imposed on expressions of individuality within homogeneous groups may outweigh the benefits and, over the long term, handicap the family system and the family business.

While this study has focused on the networks of women, there is much need to assess the networks of male family business members. The theoretical construct used in this study could support an assessment of family business participation for male family members. However, I predict that the findings would be significantly different. Men's networks appear to be both qualitatively and quantitatively different from women's on a number of dimensions. Men's interpersonal interactions 19


are characterised as less rich in spontaneity and the sharing of confidences than women's, and the socially appropriate aggressive behaviours expected of men are thought to place limits on men's development of intimate friendships. Men are also much less likely to be subject to family role prescriptions requiring intense interpersonal interaction with family members[16, pp. 75-93].

But, women are subject to social and family role prescriptions that mandate them to take care of others' interpersonal needs, and these role prescriptions are reinforced by the behaviour of their network members. Contact with less-conforming network members — or the active recruitment of new members who have non-traditional aspirations — could support a woman's movement outside her family circle and traditional gender role boundaries. Opportunities for professional and personal development that she has previously ignored or avoided may appear as attractive options once support for their pursuit is available.

An appreciation of the impact of network composition on life choices can provide any woman or man with an understanding of her or his particular personal and professional situation. The conscious assessment of and intervention in network composition can be a strategy for exploring options and moving into new personal and professional activities. Individual women who present themselves as stuck within a set of roles and behaviours could move to a new set of behaviours with the support of appropriately selected network members. Not changing network composition can significantly inhibit a woman's ability to change her behaviours and attitudes.

The information provided here could be used to support a woman's progression beyond traditional family-defined role options. Such practical changes as gaining work experience outside the family business could provide opportunities for expanding one's network beyond family boundaries. Living some distance from family members could bring interactions outside family paths and require the expansion of one's network, because the distance would prohibit family members from responding to calls for assistance.

However, it is important to note that the strength and influence of network members or of the network as a whole on a person's behaviour choices are not subject to rapid manipulation. Intrinsically, networks develop their own momentum and gain strength over time. They help to form the basic patterns of

an individual's interpersonal interactions. The composition of an interpersonal network is, in many ways, a code that can be used to understand the forces enabling particular family business dilemmas to persist. Change efforts in family businesses could be enhanced by attending to the networks involved and incorporating consideration of the historical context of their development.

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Communication in Organisations, Free Press, New York, 1976.

3. Mitchell, J.C. (Ed.), Social Networks in Urban Situations, Manchester University Press, Manchester, England, 1969.

4. Bott, E., Family and Social Network, (2nd ed.), Free Press, New York, 1971.

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20. Boissevain, J., Friends of Friends: Networks, Manipulators, and Coalitions, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1974. 20

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Life in the Family Circle