While it is well-established that entrepreneurs benefit from social support, little is known about how and when instrumental and emotional support from household members facilitate entrepreneurial action and persistence. Through a longitudinal, qualitative study, we develop a conceptual framework that shows how social support from the household becomes an integral part of the everyday activities of entrepreneurs. In contrast to the perception of social support as static, our findings illustrate it as a dynamic, ongoing process which is core to business start-up and growth over time. We also challenge the perspectives that households are simply repositories of resources and entrepreneurs passive recipients of support by demonstrating that social support is necessarily interactive, whereby entrepreneurs and households play a collaborative role in entrepreneurship. Finally, we join the debate concerning mechanisms of social support by suggesting that the main effect model and buffering hypothesis are not contradictory, but are instead interdependent.

虽然企业家从社会支持中受益是公认的，但对于家庭成员的工具和情感支持如何以及何时促进企业家行动和坚持，我们知之甚少。通过纵向、定性研究，我们开发了一个概念框架，展示来自家庭的社会支持如何成为企业家日常活动中不可或缺的一部分。与将社会支持视为静态的看法相反，我们的研究结果表明，它是一个动态的、持续的过程，是企业启动和随着时间的推移而增长的核心。我们还通过证明社会支持必然是互动的，来挑战家庭只是资源储存库和企业家被动接受支持的观点，从而企业家和家庭在创业中发挥协作作用。最后，我们通过提出主效应模型和缓冲假设并不矛盾，而是相互依存的方式加入了关于社会支持机制的辩论。