Working couples in small business.

WORKING COUPLES IN SMALL BUSINESS

Small business affords a golden opportunity for married couples who want to work together. Indeed, the living together-working together arrangement in small business is so common that the term "mom and pop store" has become a catch-phrase. This article

LITERATURE REVIEW

Little research has been conducted into the perceived quality of the business/marriage relationships of coordinated career couples. For the most part, existing literature addresses the advantages and disadvantages of career coordination. For example, Rothart contends that the biggest problem faced by couples who work together is keeping work-related problems isolated from their personal lives. Bird cites competition between spouses and too much togetherness as potential sources of marital strife. Harris foresees potential marital problems arising from the lack of an emotional outlet for couples who work together. ("Neither can go home and tell the other how bad the day was.") Nadler reflects a similar concern in commenting that coordinated career couples have no "hiding place" at home and no opportunity to be alone.

Burack and Calero point to the inevitability of conflict (both positive and negative) between couples who work together, with serious ramifications for small business profitability. Heckman, Bryson, and Bryson highlight yet another potential marital problem that stems from the common expectation of husbands that the working wife should handle homemaking and child-rearing responsibilities in addition to job responsibilities.

Heckman, Bryson, and Bryson summarize six major areas of potential trouble for couples who work together: (1) strife caused by restricted job mobility; (2) excessive demands on each spouse's time and energy; (3) inability to separate professional and personal problems; (4) role conflicts; (5) spouse competitiveness; and (6) bringing home work-related problems.

Working together has potential advantages as well as disadvantages for married couples. Bekey cites the advantage of improved communication. Brown postulates that working together may well benefit spouses who share high dependency needs. Arkin and Dobrofsky feel that working together may enhance a couple's sense of intimacy. Empirical research by Sommer indicated that business and managerial stability may be enhanced as a result of working together, and Kishel and Kishel indicate that personality compatibility is the key determinant of whether a couple can benefit by working together.

Finally, the literature identifies three main reasons why couples decide to join forces professionally: (1) financial/business necessity; (2) to reduce

employee theft; and (3) to avoid retirement.

The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes couples have toward their working and material arrangements. The central question is whether or not couples who run a small business together feel that their professional relationship has a positive impact on their marital relationship.

METHOD

The sample consisted of 220 husband and wife teams who jointly manage small businesses throughout the state of Texas. Most of the small businesses were corporations (48.6 percent) or proprietorships (35.5 percent) of long standing which had a small (10 or fewer) number of employees. Slightly more than half of the sample came from larger cities in Texas, although smaller cities were well represented. The majority (54.5 percent) of couples indicated a teamwork (equal input) approach to business decision-making, although the husband was viewed as the dominant decision maker in approximately 40 percent of the firms sampled. The majority of couples (72 percent) had worked together for at least two years; 35 percent had worked together for more than ten years.

The study instrument (table 1) was a seventeen-item questionnaire, answered by spouses independently of one another, pertaining to the marital impact of working together and the extent of professional equality. The instrument was completed by 220 males and 220 females, forming a total sample size of 440 individuals. Items were rated on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), with a rating of 4 indicating no opinion, or neutrality.

Table 2 through 4 summarize the findings arranged by total combined sample, male sample, and female sample.

Analysis of the total sample's average scores for each question (table 2) reveals "agreement" (x = 5-5.9) with four items:

* In a two-income marriage, housekeeping and child-rearing work together.

* Work problems will become personal problems for the couple that both works and lives together.

* The more time a couple spends together, the better the marriage.

The total sample expressed mild disagreement or neutrality (x = 3-3.9) with respect to the following questions:

* Both parents working is likely to have detrimental effects upon children.

* The dual-career family is characterized by more conflict between husband and wife.

* Although a woman may be "equal" in a work organization relationship, she should still be subservient to her husband at home.

* In a work organization, a man should be the boss.

* Money, or the lack of it, is the main reason for our working together.

* Competition between spouses is healthy.

The total sample expressed disagreement (x = 2-2.9) with two statements:

* The dual-career family is characterized by more competition between wife and husband.

* Too much "togetherness" has been a problem in our marriage.

Table 5 rearranges the seventeen questions according to three broad topic categories: (1) negative marital impact of working together; (2) positive marital impact of working together; and (3) equality of working relationship.

Table 5 clearly shows that respondents as a whole feel that working together has a more positive than negative impact on the marital relationship, and that husband and wife should share in decision-making.

Table 6 summarizes the results of comparing husband and wife responses to the questionnaire on a per couple basis. Pairwise t-tests compared differencies in responses for each couple. The table indicates that husbands and wives differed significantly (p < .05) on only six questions:

Question 1: Both parents working is likely to have detrimental effects upon children. (Husbands were less likely to disagree with this question.)

Question 4: The dual-career family is characterized by more conflict between husband and wife. (Husbands differed significantly from wives, although neither group expressed significant agreement with this question.)

Question 6: The dual-career family is characterized by more competition between husband and wife. (Husbands had a significantly higher mean.)

Question 8: I feel more intimacy with my spouse because we work together. (Husbands had a significantly higher mean.)

Question 16: Too much "togetherness" has been a problem in our marriage. (Husbands had a significantly higher mean.)

Overall, table 6 indicates that the couples in the sample expressed remarkable agreement in the ways in which they responded to the 17 questions.

DISCUSSION

This survey portrays positive relationships between married couples who work together in small business. Results indicate that working together daily in the same business usually has a beneficial (or at worst, neutral) impact on the couple's marital relationship. Few, if any, significantly drawbacks were revealed.

The couples perceived considerable equality between husbands and wives at work, including the crucial area of business decision-making. Moreover, they viewed themselves as partners at home, too. They favored sharing housekeeping chores along with business duties, and they did not view themselves as having typical superior-subordinate relationships.

The couples also perceived their marital relationships to be more important than their business relationships. They felt that working together helped to strengthen their marriages, although it could be argued that the sample was biased by focusing only on those couples who had developed a satisfactory marital relationship.

The largely positive results of the study cast considerable doubt on much of the literature, with its many pessimistic projections for couples who work together (based in large part on anecdotal evidence and conjecture). Apparently the marriage-enhancing role of working together has been overlooked or ignored by many writers.

Further research into couples who work together might focus on the importance of professional equality to marital harmony. Clearly this is a pivotal factor which may be missing in those marriages which do not easily accommodate partners working together. Although many factors can affect marital success, working together appears to have more benefits than previous writes would lead one to suspect. Further research is needed to evaluate the conflicting opinions current in the literature.