Work-to-family conflict and firm performance of women entrepreneurs: Roles of work-related emotional exhaustion and competitive hostility

When entrepreneurs suffer from work-to-family conflict, it can affect firm performance. This article considers how emotional exhaustion experienced in the course of running a business mediates this link and how beliefs about competitive hostility invigorate that effect. Using survey data collected from 200 women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia, a country marked by culturally traditional gender role expectations, the empirical findings show that a sense of being emotionally overextended, due to the demands of running a firm, creates a conduit for the negative interference of the family upon the firm. This escalates into diminished firm performance. The results also demonstrate that this conduit is particularly prominent when entrepreneurs feel more threatened by hostile market environments. For entrepreneurship scholarship and practice, this article establishes two notable factors; a feeling of being ‘worn out’ by the business and adverse competitive markets. These factors clarify the complex link between work-induced family strain and business performance for women entrepreneurs, who might be particularly challenged when balancing time demands in gender-discriminatory environments.