Can You Lend Me a Hand? Task-Role Alignment of Social Support for Aspiring Business Owners. (August 2013)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Can You Lend Me a Hand? Task-Role Alignment of Social Support for Aspiring Business Owners. (August 2013)
- Main Title:
- Can You Lend Me a Hand? Task-Role Alignment of Social Support for Aspiring Business Owners
- Authors:
- Kim, Phillip H.
Longest, Kyle C.
Aldrich, Howard E. - Abstract:
- Previous research has emphasized the positive impact of supportive informal relations on workers in various occupational settings. Such support seems particularly important for workers who aspire to be self-employed, running their own businesses. Existing theory, however, offers little guidance regarding the mechanisms through which these supportive relationships operate. We argue that social support and role expectation theories address this conundrum. Our framework highlights the differences between instrumental and informational support types, the requirements involved in delivering such support, and the benefits of aligning role expectations with the type of support requested. Analyzing a representative sample of people attempting to create their own businesses in the United States, we find evidence consistent with our predictions: social support's effect on people's persistence depends on alignment between the tasks performed and the roles of support providers. To the extent that the support is task-role aligned, aspiring business owners receive the greatest benefits from high-commitment service and labor assistance provided by family and low-commitment informational assistance from friends but also suffer the most when such support is misaligned. These findings cast doubt on the prevailing assumption in the broader social support literature: that having more support always leads to better outcomes.
- Is Part Of:
- Work and occupations. Volume 40:Number 3(2013)
- Journal:
- Work and occupations
- Issue:
- Volume 40:Number 3(2013)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 40, Issue 3 (2013)
- Year:
- 2013
- Volume:
- 40
- Issue:
- 3
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2013-0040-0003-0000
- Page Start:
- 213
- Page End:
- 249
- Publication Date:
- 2013-08
- Subjects:
- social support -- role expectations -- task-role alignment -- work/family issues -- self-employment -- business ownership -- entrepreneurship
Occupations -- Periodicals
Professions -- Periodicals
306.36 - Journal URLs:
- http://wox.sagepub.com ↗
http://www.sagepublications.com/ ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1177/0730888413481365 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 0730-8884
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 26014.xml