“We Have to Do It the Best Way We Can. Together”: A Phenomenological Study of the Work–Family Interface in Copreneurial Businesses

Abstract

This paper aims to advance our understanding of the intricacies of how copreneurial couples navigate their work–family interface when boundaries are blurred. While there are many studies of work-life balance and of managing family businesses, studies of the work–family interface in micro-businesses are relatively rare. Our contribution lies in extending work–family interface theories within a copreneurial context by offering a new theoretical lens, the phenomenological notion of togetherness, which we elaborate as a relational attunement and emotional sharing that involves an implicit sense of care and consideration. We do so by drawing on a study of couples who own small copreneurial leisure and tourism businesses in Greece, to elaborate how they navigate the day-to-day challenges of balancing work and family life. We elucidate their lived experience by drawing on a rarely used methodology in the field—Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.

Keywords

work life: conflict management or quality qualitative methods managing family & entrepreneurial firms

Introduction

For couples who live and work together, drawing a line between professional responsibilities and family life can be challenging. In copreneurial businesses, where couples share life goals, are committed to the responsibility of running a business, and may even live on the premises, work–family boundaries can be deeply intertwined and life partner support is critical (Barnett & Barnett, 1988; Fletcher, 2024). Prior research has examined the business impact of how copreneurs organize their roles or manage tasks (El Shoubaki et al., 2022; Hirigoyen & Villeger, 2017; Machek et al., 2016), and the copreneurial literature often focuses on “work–home boundaries, relational dynamics, resources, and the division of labor” (Woolley & Pozner, 2025, p. 99). Less is known about how they experientially navigate the work–family boundary in their daily lives.

Within copreneurial businesses, especially home-based ones like those in the tourism sector, the boundaries between work and family can be permeable, blurred physically, symbolically, and temporally (Cederholm & Åkerström, 2016; Fitzgerald & Muske, 2002). While this blurring can afford flexibility, for example, having no set hours means one partner can stay home with the children (Galloway et al., 2022; Helmle et al., 2014), tensions may arise around unanticipated issues and long working hours which can impact emotional and social well-being (Lee et al., 2024; Rodrigues & Franco, 2022). In their review of the literature, El Shoubaki et al. (2022, p. 128) note that few studies explore how couples “construct boundaries and moderate tensions,” and that findings tend to focus on traditional organizational strategies such as creating goals, rules about available times/hours, and formal boundary markers such as signs, locked doors and fences (Butler & Modaff, 2012). Even fewer studies explore how couples navigate their work–family interface on a daily basis (Sun et al., 2020). We contribute to ongoing discussions in copreneurial research by foregrounding the lived experience of copreneurial couples to offer insights into how they navigate the challenges of their work–family interface in their unique relationship.

The question we explore is: How do copreneurial couples running businesses (less than five employees) within the Greek leisure and tourism industry navigate the challenges of balancing the daily demands of work and family in everyday life? This question is important because how couples deal with their work–family interface impacts not only the resilience and sustainability of their business, but also, importantly, the quality of their family life and their sense of well-being. To offer an alternative way of understanding the work–family interface, we adopt an inductive phenomenological methodology, which allows insights to emerge from couples’ personal lived experiences and stays close to their own interpretations, language, and meanings. As such, we do not begin with a predetermined theoretical framework, identify antecedents and consequences, factors, generalized strategies or behaviors.

Our contribution is both theoretical and methodological. We extend current theories of work–family life and copreneurship by offering the phenomenological notion of togetherness as a new lens through which to understand how copreneurial couples navigate their work-family interface. This calls attention to how couples experience balancing the demands of family and work through feelings of togetherness—a relational sensitivity in which they are attuned to each other through an emotional bond and sense of caring for each other. Togetherness is implicated in feelings that family and business life are not separate but mutually entwined and embedded within both work and family relationships. Our methodological contribution lies in bringing a rarely used methodology to this field, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to illustrate the fine-grained daily challenges and the often-hidden interplay of the practical, relational, and emotional aspects of trying to balance work and family life. IPA does not begin with a theory, nor develop constructs or generalizations, but emphasizes what it means to be a human being embedded in this situation by elucidating how research participants give meaning to their lived experience. Elucidation aims to unfold something we take for granted and in doing so opens up “rich and multi-layered possibilities” (Williams, 2018, p. 50) and insights that may resonate with others. The notion of togetherness emerged abductively as we searched for a way of explaining interviewees comments conceptually without losing their humanness (Cunliffe, 2022; Smith et al., 2022).

The paper is structured as follows. We begin by examining the literature around balancing work–family life and then explore key themes that relate specifically to the work–family interface in copreneurial businesses. We then describe the methodology, followed by our interpretation of the interviewees’ comments which are interspersed with some theoretical observations. Finally, we elaborate the notion of togetherness and its relevance to our understanding of the lived experience of copreneurial couples.

Literature Review: The Work–Family Interface in Family and Copreneurial Businesses

We begin by offering an overview of how family business literature addresses the challenges of balancing work–family life, followed by a discussion of the additional challenges faced by copreneurs and how they navigate these challenges. We conclude by outlining three key areas of future research identified in the literature that we address in this study.

The Work–Family Interface in Family Businesses

There is a growing body of work around the tensions and strategies involved in balancing work obligations with personal life. Within the literature, various terms are employed, including work-life balance, work-life flexibility, work–family conflict (WFC), work–family balance, and work–family interface (see Gatrell et al., 2013, for a comprehensive overview). While balancing work-life demands applies to employees in most types of organizations, it can become significantly more complicated in family firms due to the complexity of managing different goals, interests, and roles of family members as owner, partner, employee, spouse, etc., (Bettinelli et al., 2022). Early work addressed the impact of WFC on business success (Foley & Powell, 1997; Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985), before expanding to explore how conflict and stress arising from incompatible demands of work and family roles challenge participation in both domains (Akinbode et al., 2018; Hilbrecht & Lero, 2014; Peregrino-Dartey, 2018). Within the literature, studies of work–family balance have identified tensions around goal congruence, workload issues, decision making and task allocation (Danes, 2006; Danes et al., 2009; Leung et al., 2020; Ratten & Jones, 2020). These tensions can be exacerbated in family businesses where the high emotional attachment between family members can lead to relationship conflicts that are difficult to resolve (Qiu & Freel, 2020).

De Massis et al. (2023) emphasize that family businesses are particularly emotion-dense environments because of the family's strong identification with the firm and its future. Family members can provide emotional support for strategic decisions and sustaining entrepreneurial motivation and resilience (Edelman et al., 2016). Cogan et al. (2022) differentiate between social support (e.g., providing attention and empathy) and instrumental support (using household resources). However, family member emotions can also complicate the management of family businesses through self-interest and rivalry (Bettinelli et al., 2022; De Massis et al., 2023). The emotional climate of a family business is therefore critical to business success (Brundin & Plate, 2024) and as we will show, even more critical to negotiating challenges in copreneurial businesses.

Work–Family Challenges in Copreneurial Businesses

While key factors influencing the work–family interface are similar to those in family businesses, copreneurs may face additional challenges, especially when they live on or near their work premises and are the sole managers or workers. In this context, work is not necessarily defined nor paid in conventional terms and work activities and family life may be fluid and overlapping (Helmle et al., 2014; Leung et al., 2020; Neubaum & Payne, 2021). Copreneurs often see their business not just as an occupation but as a way of life with no clear physical and temporal boundaries. Consequently, stressful events in one domain can directly impact the other, increasing complexity and tension (Danes & Lee, 2004; Fitzgerald & Muske, 2002).

Gender differences constitute a significant theme within the family business literature and the tensions relating to gender related issues take on a sharper focus within the copreneurial literature. Women are often framed as invisible business partners, with their roles demoted or confined to gendered work practices and to household and child-rearing activities, while their male counterparts are viewed as largely unencumbered by routine domestic concerns (Jurik et al., 2019; Sun et al., 2020). For example, women juggle multiple roles relating to household, childcare and business activities more than men. Studies indicate that when roles and responsibilities are shared more equitably between copreneurial partners, a multifaceted form of value (economic, social, emotional, and technical) can emerge (Deacon et al., 2014; Hirigoyen & Villeger, 2017; Machek et al., 2016).

Beyond the sharing of roles and responsibilities, spousal support is identified as a key factor in managing work–family tensions. However, this is often perceived as the female partner supporting their spouse through gatekeeping activities such as taking phone calls and organizing information (Dreyer & Busch, 2021; Helmle et al., 2014; McDonald et al., 2017). When defined and enacted more broadly as emotional support and empathy, spousal support can be beneficial in reducing stress, sustaining marital quality, and indirectly supporting business performance (Peregrino-Dartey, 2018). Tolentino et al.'s (2022) survey and factor analysis of Australian copreneurs, found that cognitive empathy, the ability to “mentalize and understand another person's emotional state” (p. 3) influences psychological well-being and role performance in positive ways. Interestingly, while female cognitive empathy increased their male partners wellbeing they found no evidence of the reverse. In a recent review of the copreneurial literature, Mahanti et al. (2025) identify a need for further research addressing how copreneurs deal with work-life balance and also the nature of copreneurial relationships, which is the focus of our paper.

Navigation Strategies

Literature on navigating the work–family interface has highlighted several strategies, including shared goals, aligned values, mutual spousal support, and fostering emotional well-being (Helmle et al., 2011; Helmle et al., 2014; Leung et al., 2020). A key ongoing debate is the classical dilemma of whether integrating work and family or segmenting them produces better outcomes. Segmentation means creating physical, symbolic and mental boundaries between work and family as a coping mechanism to reduce conflicts (Franco & Piceti, 2020; Sun et al., 2020). Integration involves blending work and home life so they complement each other. Within family and copreneurial businesses, this issue is more complicated because they involve individual, family and contextual factors (Michael-Tsabari et al., 2020). Dreyer and Busch (2021), for example, found copreneurs actively crafted segmentation strategies such as jointly establishing clear rules about when business talk is permitted, relying on one's spouse to help maintain boundaries, and creating designated recovery phases involving leisure activities together. They concluded that spending quality time with one's partner outside of work significantly improved perceptions of work-life balance. This finding aligns with Li et al.'s (2013) study of US bed-and-breakfast innkeepers, which highlighted that managing and maintaining strong borders between work and home life is crucial because a high degree of integration may lead to a loss of control over one's personal life.

Beyond segmentation, the literature also focuses on family adaptive strategies. These are approaches families take to cope with structural, social, and economic barriers while attempting to maintain or enhance their economic viability and well-being (Moen & Wethington, 1992, p. 234). Lee et al. (2017) investigated the adaptive strategies of minority female small business owners, identifying actions such as reallocating tasks between family and business, interweaving family and work duties, and employing volunteer or hired help. They found that external demands often prompt owners to reallocate family resources toward business tasks and intertwine family and business activities—for example, completing household tasks during work hours or vice versa. This concept is closely tied to Qiu and Freel's (2020) notion of vacillation, defined as oscillating between family and business demands by reallocating resources—such as deferring household chores for business needs or vice versa. They also underscore how unique family characteristics affect the adoption of these adjustment strategies, indicating a need for research exploring diverse family business forms.

Key Issues Identified in the Literature

We suggest that three main issues emerge in the copreneurial literature in terms of expanding studies around the work–family interface. First, a need for fine-grained qualitative experiential studies that go beyond identifying abstracted factors, variables, mechanisms, and dynamics, to explore how copreneurial couples anticipate, experience, and actively manage the work–family interface in their day-to-day relationship (Fletcher & Adiguna, 2020; Lee et al., 2024), specifically how couples perceive and co-construct boundaries (El Shoubaki et al., 2022, pp. 129–130). Similarly, Fletcher (2024) argues that we need a deeper understanding of how copreneurs negotiate responsibilities and challenges in their relationship, which means elaborating what this feels and looks like in their everyday lived experience.

Secondly, copreneurial research is mainly conducted in the US, followed by the UK, the Czech Republic, South Africa, and New Zealand (El Shoubaki et al., 2022). Therefore, more studies are needed addressing how the family–work interface manifests across different cultures, life experiences and life stage (Franco & Piceti, 2020; Michael-Tsabari et al., 2020; Wielsma & Brunninge, 2019) .

Third, in their systematic literature review, Michael-Tsabari et al. (2020) concluded that much of the existing literature relies heavily on established theories and conceptual models such as fundamental interpersonal relationship orientation theory (e.g., Hedberg & Danes, 2012; McDonald et al., 2017), work-life conflict (WLC) theories (e.g., Helmle et al., 2014), leadership and identity theories (e.g., Wielsma & Brunninge, 2019), and resource-based theories like conservation of resource theory and the work–home resources model (e.g., Dreyer & Busch, 2021, 2024; ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). They, along with El Shoubaki et al. (2022), call for more diverse and innovative ways of theorizing to shed light on the intricacies of navigating the copreneurial work–family interface.

Our study contributes to addressing these three key issues by undertaking a phenomenological investigation, which we then theorize abductively, of how copreneurial couples in the Greek tourism industry experience and navigate the challenges and tensions of their family and work lives interface on a daily basis.

Methodology

Research Context

This study investigates and explores copreneurs in the leisure and tourism industry in Crete, Greece. Despite calls for contextualization and comparative research (Jurik et al., 2019), few studies exist on the relationship between copreneurship and tourism. This is remarkable, given that small and medium-sized family firms dominate the industry (Peters & Kallmuenzer, 2018). Crete was chosen due to it being the largest Greek island and an established tourist destination for the past few decades. The number of inbound visits in Crete totaled over 5.35 million in 2024 (Deputy Regional Governor for Tourism). In Greece, 8 out of 10 businesses are family-owned, approximately 70% are microenterprises providing 45% of the total number of jobs and producing approximately 12% of the GDP of the Greek economy.

Phenomenology

Decades of research on work-life balance in Organization and Management Studies often leans towards quantitative and positivist qualitative approaches, employing surveys, scales, and looking for causal factors, antecedents, and predictors (Beigi & Shirmohammadi, 2017). Positivist research is also influential in entrepreneurship and family business studies (El Shoubaki et al., 2022; Fletcher & Adiguna, 2020; Pittaway et al., 2018). Non-mainstream qualitative methodologies can extend this work by exploring the experiential complexities of managing work–family life, and phenomenological approaches, particularly, can humanize issues by staying close to how people interpret and make sense of their lives (Rajasinghe et al., 2021; Rydzik et al., 2017). We suggest phenomenologically inspired research is therefore of value in shedding insight into the interplay of work–family life in copreneurial businesses where the relationship between partners is critical to personal, family, and business well-being.

Phenomenology's ontology and epistemology is subjectivist, focusing on how human beings experience and give meaning to their world through rich descriptions of their lived experience. The phenomenological researcher's focus “is on the meaning of the situation as it is given in the participant's experience” (Finlay, 2014, p. 123). A phenomenological methodology therefore offers a way of addressing Mahanti et al.'s (2025) call to look at the relationships of couples because it offers more contextually relevant and resonant forms of knowledge by drawing attention to practical ways of coping with uniquely experienced living exigencies (Helin, 2015). It is also a more human form of theorizing that emphasizes the importance of “relationships between people—in understanding and making meaning about our world in moments of sociality and moral being.” (Cunliffe, 2022, p. 12, italics in original). As such, phenomenology does not aim to generalize or propose theories, for these are abstractions of lived experience, but to offer a contemplative understanding (Heidegger, [1927]1962) that elucidates experience (Glendinning, 2007) through insights that resonate and provoke reflection on taken-for-granted practices and ways of being. In doing so, phenomenological methodologies can make a significant contribution to our understanding of the complexities of being a copreneurial couple (Leitch et al., 2010) and dealing with the exigences of family/work life.

Phenomenological research addresses a central question, “What does it feel like to be me?” that is, first person experience which stays as close as possible to the interpretations and words of participants, to the felt sense of everyday actions and the meanings they attach to their experiences. In other words, it does not begin with a theory (i.e., not a priori theorizing) but is inductive, requiring researchers to be sensitive to the seemingly mundane details of everyday lived experience by “opening up the pores to the feelings and sensations that emerge for both our participants and ourselves” (Tomkins & Eatough, 2013, p. 267). Exploring how people give meaning to their experience affords an appreciation of the situated, relational and lived experience of copreneurship. This can help researchers “understand the complexities of entrepreneurial relationships, consciousness, how individuals evolve as entrepreneurs, the unique issues they encounter, the actions and interactions, ups and downs and transformation of their identity” (Rajasinghe et al., 2021, p. 869). Interviews were conducted at the copreneurs place of work or home to give a better sense of the cultural landscape (Neergaard & Leitch, 2015) and what family and work life looks and feels like.

Research Design and Method

This paper is based on a larger study conducted by Sophie over 12 months to investigate the experiences and challenges of managing a copreneurial business. She lives in Crete but does not work in the tourism business. The sample was purposive, consisting of seven couples active in the tourism industry. A small number of interviews is common to IPA (Smith et al., 2022) because a key element is idiography—achieving “an in-depth and detailed understanding of each research participant or case” (Gill, 2014, p. 36). The particularities and details of peoples’ experience in specific events are more important than abstract concepts. Jurik et al. (2019) found that copreneurial studies frequently interview only one partner or both partners together, which may obscure the contributions of each partner and individual perspectives. Both partners were therefore interviewed separately (one husband later declined an interview) in order to understand their personal experience of work and family life. Interviews were conducted in either English or Greek, depending on the interviewee's preference (See Appendix 1 for interviewee profiles). Sophie knew one partner in two couples and the remaining couples were suggested by snowball sampling. All the couples had children, varying in age from 4 to 31 years. Interviews lasted between 30 and 90 min.

Data was obtained through open interviews and followed IPA principles, comprising of open questions beginning with “how” or “what” to facilitate more meaningful conversations (see Appendix 2). This allowed interviewees to speak fluidly about issues important to them (Hamilton et al., 2017). Questions moved between asking participants to describe their experience and then comment upon or evaluate the experience. In this way, the interviewer can explore more deeply the meanings people give to their lives (Carradus, 2014; Cope, 2011).

Nizza et al. (2021) identify four key quality indicators in IPA: Constructing a compelling, unfolding narrative; developing a vigorous experiential and/or existential account; close analytic reading of participants’ words; and attending to similarities and differences across the interviews. To remain faithful to these criteria, Sophie engaged in a close analytic reading through the iterative process of listening and reading, re-listening and re-reading each interview, making initial exploratory notes which stayed close to what was meaningful to participants. For example, one participant described in detail what he ate for breakfast, which initially may seem to be irrelevant, but was important because he was proud that he farmed his own land, had his own livestock, and that the taverna customers were able to eat the same organic and free-range food that his family ate. Understanding an interviewee's lived world helps a researcher make sense and develop an experiential account (Nizza et al., 2021) that resonates with others. Sophie then identified experiential themes within each participant's experience, and organized them in a Table (see Appendix 3 for an example). The next stage in the IPA interpretive process involves looking for recurrent themes across the interviews—themes present in at least a third to half of the transcripts—then grouping these into six overarching themes, each highlighting similarities across the interviews.

This paper draws on an overarching theme, We Are In It Together, within which are four recurrent sub-themes that elucidate the intricacies of trying to manage work–family life: Ongoing respectful communication across work/life boundaries; Shared purpose and mutual understanding; Consideration for one another, and Being in it together. Implicated within each sub-theme lies the notion of togetherness. The idea of togetherness emerged abductively as we noted that interviewees mentioned the term or used phrases in which togetherness was implicated, and then looked for ways to explain this. As a form of reasoning or theorizing, abduction is not about taking a fact and trying to “jam it into a category or to rationalize it in terms of your favorite idea” (Abbott, 2004, p. 244), but to look for possible explanations (Locke et al., 2008). We therefore searched the phenomenological literature for a way of explaining and elucidating what togetherness means and came across the work of Gerder Walther, which we elaborate in the Discussion section. We now move on to discuss and illustrate how these recurrent themes are embedded in the daily lives of copreneurs.

Navigating the Challenges of Work–Family Life: Together

A key issue plays through our findings: The ongoing and relational nature of navigating the challenges of marriage, life, family, and owning a business. This can be seen as each copreneur expresses how they deal with work–family demands in ways that are entwined in the nature of their relationship with each other. We now elaborate each theme.

Theme 1: Ongoing Respectful Communication Across Work–Family Boundaries

In micro-copreneurial businesses, where the business may also be home, where physical boundaries do not exist, and where business and household responsibilities often overlap, unique challenges of balancing work and family life emerge. Interviewees spoke of how ongoing discussions about business and family issues across work/family spaces were key in creating a sense of togetherness that spilled across these spaces and helped them navigate the demands of their daily work and personal lives.

For example, for Debbie and Alex (Couple 3) who own a bar and shop, discussions about the business may begin in the house, be paused, reevaluated, and discussed again at the bar before being brought back to the house:

Debbie : Nothing ever happens without it being discussed, normally in the house you know over breakfast, dinner or lunch … because we’re together all the time, we’re living together and having the business together. Most of the decisions it's not even like a decision, most of the times you’ve discussed something and ok we’ll do it, and then either he’ll arrange it or I’ll arrange it and it's done. […] It can be shouted about first [laughs] but that's normal family life.

They started the business at the same time as starting a family, and as both business and family grew together the boundaries became blurred. For Debbie, business discussions are part of everyday family life—of being together and a taken-for-granted part of their everyday interaction to the extent that “it's not even like a decision.” Emma from Couple 5 also expressed that decisions are made “on the go.”

For some couples, it is not a problem if work discussions take place at home. One father (Petros, Couple 2) said he preferred to talk about the business in front of his children because:

Petros : The kids also get involved in the conversation you know. Everyone has a say […] that's healthy then the decision is what everybody wants.

Maria and Adonis (Couple 5) also talk about the business in front of their children because it's a part of everyday life:

Maria : We talk about work in front of the children, yeah sure, the kids know we have to go to work now and stuff like this, it's our life’. It's a choice we had to do this and we have to do it the best way we can. Together.

Creating a familial atmosphere is essential at home and work because of the nature of these micro-copreneurial businesses: Living on or near the premises, few employees, and the importance of creating a place where customers/visitors return. Maria observed that in their beach bar and restaurant, visitors and locals come “to keep company,” which means that the family is a key part of, and needs to understand, the nature of this relationship.

However, there are differences. Eleni and her husband (Couple 6) had been married for over 30 years, each previously had their own career and started their business less than a year before the interview. In this early stage, they found the overlap between business and family life uncomfortable and an intrusion:

Eleni : Yes, we discuss business issues, I would say a lot. Just somewhere [gestures to the house]. It has taken some time out of family. […] we begin a discussion about [the business]. It takes time out of our lives. The [business] has entered. It is a job in our lives. Before it wasn’t.

This highlights the influence of personal experience and choice. Couples who started their business around the same time as their marriage (couples 2, 3, 4, 7) communicated when needed across work–family boundaries, allowing their business and family to grow together. In contrast, Eleni and her partner found the family–work interface difficult, and were comfortable making some decisions on their own.

Copreneurs also spoke about the need for respectful discussions—especially when disagreements occur. In this context of work–family boundaries, this is not easy, as Sarah (Couple 2) observed:

Sarah: The bad stuff we can kind of be angry with each other for a couple of days. Cold shoulder, that's hard, coz then how do you turn that off? When you’re still trying to raise your kids? That's where you have to kind of split, I’m mad at you because of the business—but as far as the kids are concerned, you’re fine. I don't stay mad at him for very long,

Some couples create an unwritten rule that grievances are not allowed to cross certain boundaries. This could be a physical boundary such as the threshold of the house, or a more relational boundary such as in front of the children. Maria and Adonis (Couple 5) described their mutual understanding of negotiating their differences concerning the business: That although they may disagree, arguments are not taken home and discussions are not allowed to escalate because they respect each other's differences:

Maria: There's every chance that we don't agree, but we have respect for each other. I mean ok, you like this water [picks up a bottle of water], I don't. Ok so we don't agree. Finished ok. We don't take this home. We have a conversation so that we can be hugging. It's the rule, it's the rule!

Adonis: We don’t have a problem at all because we understand each other easily. […] I listen to her, if there is a problem Maria listens to me.

Respectful discussion means that both partners air their views and conclusions are reached harmoniously even if it is not the outcome that one partner preferred. The nature of the copreneurs’ relationship with each other—maintained through respect, understanding, and in the case of conflict not allowing disagreements to come between them or cross the threshold to the house—is highlighted as key to shaping and maintaining togetherness in the work–family interface.

Indeed, couples who have been working together for many years saw respectful communication across work/life spaces as an integral part of both family and work life because it helped develop a tacit understanding of issues, so that decisions seem to “make themselves” (Emma, Couple 5) and become mundane—an accepted and unquestioned part of everyday interaction. Consequently, partners make joint decisions and take action with the understanding and support of the other, embodying feelings of togetherness and “we-ness.” This also helped them routinize work and problem-solving, which connects to the second theme because communication helps in creating a shared purpose.

The importance of communication in negotiating boundaries and balancing work–home demands has been acknowledged (Danes & Lee, 2004; Kreiner et al., 2009). While Helmle et al. (2014) found that communication had both positive and negative effects on the work-life balance of copreneurs, both alleviating and increasing conflict, they do not elaborate what those communication processes involve. The novel aspect of this theme lies in the importance of respecting one another when dealing with work–family challenges and goals that may clash—and in illustrating what respectful communication encompasses. As Debbie and Sarah say, normal family life involves anger and shouting, and WLC studies identify many reasons why this occurs. Ways of dealing with this conflict through segmentation and adaptive strategies relate mainly to tasks and activities. We suggest that our interviewees understanding of respect as an ethical, responsive, and communicative relationship resonates with Ricoeur (1992), who believes that respect is ethical in the sense of respecting others, viewing other people as irreplaceable and caring about them. This can be seen in comments such as Maria's “we have conversations so that we can be hugging,” Petros's “everyone has a say,” and Debbie's that everything is discussed.

Theme 2: Shared Purpose and Mutual Understanding

All the copreneurs discussed the importance of creating a shared purpose that transcends the work–family boundary, and involves a mutual understanding of the business, their goals, and how they make work-related decisions. Both Debbie and Alex (Couple 3) explained that they had to deal with challenges arising from the Greek financial crisis, which resulted in shutting the lower part of the bar. Both were now focused on expanding the bar in a way that they considered acceptable:

Debbie : My personal goal, and I think it’ll be his at the moment as well, is to get the whole place downstairs open again and working, and working as it should be.

This shared purpose was to co-own the “most popular nightclub in Chania.” While each saw themselves differently—Debbie as a “glamourous barwoman by night” and Alex as “one of the first barmen in this [town]”—they both share the desire to build a future business/income for their children.

Elena and Akis (Couple 4) own an apartment complex, which both try to make a space that they themselves would enjoy when on holiday. This space reflects their shared purpose and mutual understanding of what is needed:

Akis : We have we have a common vision and a similar way of thinking. We have the same practical minds. For example, in a business with my sister, [although] we have grown up together, I couldn’t work [with her] because we don’t have the same, as we say, worldview. […] With my wife we have the same views on many issues and for decision making, it usually means what one wants, the other wants it and we agree.

Elena : It has helped us that I am similar with Akis.

Akis's comments indicate that it's not just a shared vision, but a mutual understanding of what that vision or purpose means—a way of being, thinking and interacting (between themselves and with others) together. This was reflected in Alice's comments that their taverna is a “good place” that her husband sees as “his little home,” where people can come to talk and eat. We suggest that within a shared purpose lies a mutual and often tacit understanding between couples about, for example, what a “good place” means. A mutual understanding is also expressed in having the “same practical mind” and “worldview,” which helps reduce the risk of arguments and stress, creates a unique business identity, and facilitates a sense of balance between work and family through a shared understanding of being in it together.

The comments made by copreneurs also indicate that mutual understanding and a shared purpose also means being sensitive to each other's differences, as Maria and Adonis (Couple 5) who own a bar and restaurant note. Maria helps manage her husband's stress:

Maria : They need a crazy woman like me, I always smile, going around, ‘Hello, how are you?’ And I know that the way I am, the persona with our guests, it makes my husband feel relaxed, because if something happens, I’m the only one that can save it somehow.

Adonis : My wife is really pleased to be with the customers, I get tired, I can’t, I hide myself, sometimes I don’t go out [into the restaurant] at all.

Her husband and three friends started the business, but Maria chose to become directly involved after a year when she felt that things were not running smoothly and they needed her “persona.” Adonis reinforced the complementarity of each other's differences in their shared purpose:

Adonis : We complement each other. In addition, I think that I am the car and Maria is the driver of that car, basically it requires both of us and we have done it well.

This, and other examples, illustrate that a mutual understanding of each other's differences and how they can be leveraged towards a shared purpose is an important factor in the success of their business and their personal relationship. It also illustrates how, in our social (and family) relationships we experience ourselves through the other person and they through us (Schutz, 1967).

However, a shared purpose and hopes for the future are not always straightforward, especially when the future is uncertain and generations do not share expectations:

Debbie : One of the reasons why we’ve kept on and not rented to anyone else is because we hoped the children would take over, and I believe that if we hadn’t had these eight years of crisis, the children would have been far more open to this but now it's a risk.

Alex : We are also trying to involve our kids in this story. We are trying to have a continuation that's not so easy nowadays. Kids don’t take risk with this tragic situation we live in, […] they’re frightened something might go wrong or they’ll start having debts.

Both recognize that this shared purpose may not be the choice of their children, which leads to their feeling of mutual disappointment.

The excerpts above highlight that on a daily basis, enacting a shared purpose can be both straightforward and complex, based on agreement and difference. This builds on existing literature by highlighting that the relationship between couples is key to enacting a shared purpose because it involves a mutual understanding of how their similarities and differences work together. While one may suggest this is part of couples’ adjustment or adaptive strategies (Moen & Wethington, 1992) , we suggest the copreneurs comments illustrate that it is more: They highlight the importance of being sensitive and responsive to each other when creating and enacting a shared purpose and when difficulties arise, which brings us to the next theme.

Theme 3: Consideration for One Another

Building on the first two themes, we suggest that implicit in the personal relationship of the copreneurs is a consideration for each other. Consideration for one another goes beyond dialogue and joint decision-making to a deeper and more empathetic understanding and concern for each other's needs at home and work. It is interwoven with the first theme—respect—but goes beyond respect to embody “benevolent spontaneity” (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 190), a relationship of solicitude involving feelings of care for the other. This was emphasized particularly by the female copreneurs, for example, Maria (Couple 5) has four children and her husband Adonis has insomnia and sleeps as little as two hours a night:

Maria : You have to understand if one of the partners is tired, it's allowed to be tired without being annoyed.

Later in the interview, she commented on how consideration for each other helps them deal with the demands of work and family life and share the stress:

Maria : He does everything to make it easier for me. He does it for me, without me asking. I come home early, and I sleep, but he can be the one waking up in the morning before me to go with the kids so I can rest. […], and he will be there with the kids, playing and homework.

Embedded in her comments are feelings of caring for each other and being proactive in helping one's partner deal with anxiety and stress.

But while identified as an important issue, mutual consideration was not always present, and this led to anxiety across home and work life for some. The female copreneurs, who were all mothers, spoke of the stress of taking care of the family and the house as well as the business. Sarah (Couple 2) has four young children and admitted the extent of her anxiety:

Sarah : I was like certified psycho. I probably should have had papers with a stamp, been in a mental institute.

While Petros didn’t immediately sense her stress, when she confessed that she needed help, he offered a solution almost instantly and played a supportive role in helping her with her anxiety—an example of benevolent spontaneity:

Sarah : I mean he's a good problem solver, because he's like “What can I do to help you?” I need somebody who comes in here and cleans. He was like ‘done!’’ As easy as that you know. So, the anxiety, he knows how to extinguish the fire, so to say.

For Sarah, Petros's consideration and care for her was expressed in his action and in knowing, as she later observed, “We have each other”. The majority of work–family tension for the couples in this study stemmed from issues relating to home life rather than arguments about the business itself. While studies of segmentation strategies often focus on actions such as establishing rules on working hours (Dreyer & Busch, 2021), the excerpts above also highlight the relational aspect: That it's important for couples to consider each other's personal needs in resolving tensions. Emotional spousal support is seen as an important factor in mitigating tension and creating feelings of well-being because stressful business demands and life events can have a significant impact both family and work (Danes & Lee, 2004; Dreyer & Busch, 2021; Leung et al., 2020). For our copreneurs, support was based on consideration in the form of paying attention to, anticipating, and responding to each other's needs.

However, this does not always translate so easily when cultural differences are present. Traditionally, in Greece, husbands work while wives stay at home. Debbie (English, Couple 3) finds that the majority of household tasks have fallen to her and draws upon her husband's culture as an explanation for his behavior:

Debbie : Erm, I would say that he's very Greek and a lot of the time I would say selfish, but that's a bit of a harsh word. A lot of the things that I worry about such as what are we going to have for lunch, wouldn't really concern him.

But when necessary, he helps:

When the kids were small his role was to take them out of my hair and he's really good at that, so that I could get a break.

Elena (Couple 4, both Greek) stated that as a mother she has more to think about in terms of cooking for the household, but in the case of cross-cultural marriages, some of the wives compromised to maintain harmony at home and work, as Alice, a British wife with a Greek husband (Couple 1) noted:

Alice: I was coming from an open society, and I was coming to Greece and Crete. He wasn’t quite the hardcore Cretan farmer, but I’ve had to compromise a lot more.

Although times are changing, marriages with traditional roles are still observed, and this connects with Jurik et al.'s (2019) observation of the impact of cultural differences around gender roles in copreneurial businesses in the Czech Republic and the United States. However, we illustrate how the couples in our study understand each other's emotions and feelings and work out personal, gender and cultural differences in ways that go beyond division of labor and compromise—ways that often express care and compassion in their everyday relationships. This means recognizing and being attentive to each other's differences—as we will discuss later, a phenomenological notion of being in relation to others, occurring within moments of time and place, that is, embedded in a unique relationship, time and place.

Theme 4: Managing the Work–Family Interface Means Being in it Together

The three themes above illustrate that when work and family life are entwined, the nature of the relationship between copreneurial partners is critical to the success of the business and to a harmonious family life. Ongoing and respectful dialogue, a shared purpose, consideration and care for each other are key, but a thread running through each of these and which stands out as significant is a sense of being in it together. This was expressed in different ways by the copreneurs. When asked “what is the most rewarding aspect of being in business with his wife?”, Petros (Couple 2) answered:

Petros: That we see that we can be a good team, you know, if we, if one of us takes the job that we can do, we can be a good team.

His wife Sarah also spoke of feeling like a team and doing things together both at home and work:

Sarah: I like the fact that I feel like we are a team. There's not much that goes by business wise or home life that we don’t do together. I’m not going to say everything is 50/50 but I mean for the most part, he takes care of the bar, but he doesn’t do anything without me. I like that.

Similarly, Alice (Couple 1), articulated that from the beginning she and her husband (who had been in business for 15 years) were always a team regardless of any differences:

Alice: At the end of the day, we are always a team. We can disagree or agree but at the end of the day we are a team and we always have been and that's what's made us be able to last all these years in business.

For the couples being a “team” means being jointly involved in discussions and decision-making, working harmoniously together and, as Sarah says, doing things together. Embedded in this lies a deep sense of belonging together that rarely exists in conventional work teams, and as Alice notes, impacts their longevity.

As previous excerpts also show, this feeling of being in it together is expressed in many ways, and we suggest that it is more than just a physical presence, it is relational—a shared emotional sensitivity to each other and a feeling of connectedness that lies across work–family boundaries. As Maria (Couple 5) noted, this is about talking, planning and making decisions together in a comfortable setting:

Maria : We finish work and we go out. Maybe, we go home and open a bottle of wine and talk about what happened today and what we can do together, and we always make plans together. He never makes a decision without asking me and the same with me.

We suggest that feelings of being in it together in both work and family are implicated in such daily activities across home and work, despite individual differences. In their study of the work spouse relationship, Whitman and Mandeville (2021, p. 287) talk about a “blended union” of various work and personal relationships. While this type of relationship is a strong friendship and not a romantic one, the notion of blended union can also offer a lens for studying copreneurial relationships where love, business, work, family, individuals, and partners are entangled and expressed in practical acts of consideration and care for each other.

These acts may be seen as mundane from the outside, but they are deliberate and practical activities that are ways of expressing and emphasizing that the couple are together in both business and personal life. For example, eating together.

Debbie (Couple 3): Even though it's not a day off, we have a tradition that we get Sunday lunchtime to go and eat fish—that's our thing. In the winter we have an English Sunday lunch because I love Sunday lunch.

Maria (Couple 5): With my husband, we eat altogether Saturday and Sunday, that's it in the summertime because otherwise, I’m working, he's working, the kids, school, kindergarten and stuff like that.

The significance of this shared experience lies in taking time out of the business and busy schedules to be a couple; to bond and communicate over dinner. Having this sense of being in it together in their personal lives was critical to the business's operation, and the smooth running of the business further solidified this connection in their home life.

To summarize, our interviews show that where physical and relational boundaries are blurred between home and work, a mutually supportive relationship that extends across those boundaries is key to navigating the work–family interface and achieving a balance between work, life, and family. Underlying each theme is the importance of paying attention to each other, and each couple has developed their own ways of navigating their work-life interface: What aspects to segregate (e.g., not taking business disagreements home) and what to integrate (e.g., discussing business in front of the children). This involves an implicit sense of care and consideration, of being sensitive and responsive to each other that is expressed in their unique relationship. However, theme four, Being in it Together, suggests particularly that in the copreneurs’ shared experience of managing a business and living together, they have developed a sense of togetherness, an emotional bond or a relational attunement that goes beyond working as a team or as business partners. This sense of togetherness intertwines each couple's personal and work lives in ways that are unique to their relationship and their circumstances.

We now move on to elaborate the notion of togetherness and how it is implicated in managing the work–family interface. In doing so, we offer a theoretical lens that presents an alternative way of understanding how copreneurial couples navigate their work–family interface—one that brings to the surface the emotional sensitivity that allows each couple to function effectively as both life partners and business co-owners.

Discussion: The Importance of Togetherness in Navigating Work and Family Life

The importance of feeling that “we are in it together” played through each of the interviews in implicit and explicit ways. Togetherness is a distinctly phenomenological concern because phenomenologists are interested in a social ontology of subjectivity and intersubjectivity: What it means to be in the world as a person, and what it means to be with others in a community (e.g., Heidegger [1962]2007). We therefore searched the phenomenological literature for ways of explaining the copreneurs’ experiences and came across the work of phenomenological philosopher Gerda Walther (1923) where the notion of togetherness initially found form. She argued that social relationships within communities and families emerge through an “inner joining” or a feeling of belonging together, which involves a knowing-of-each-other (p. 20). She does not reduce this to factors or mechanisms, nor does she see it as a form of cognition, but as a wave—a feeling—that flows through us and allows us to grow together (p. 34). This wave can be experienced as feelings of love between family members who have a shared or “common life” (p. 66). Indeed, Walther argues that an emotional bond is key to feelings of togetherness.

Later phenomenologists also explored this notion of “we-experience” or intersubjectivity, including Paul Ricoeur who provoked us to think about who I am, who I am in-relation-with-others, and how this impacts ourselves and our lives. He argued:

The selfhood of oneself implies otherness to such an intimate degree that one cannot be thought of without the other (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 3)

From this perspective, people are not individual entities to be explained through abstract constructs, but are embedded, embodied relational beings-with-others. We discover ourselves and what it means to be human in our living experience with others—through our feelings, commitments and responsibilities for and with others. Indeed, Crossley (1996, p. 173) suggests that “intersubjectivity is the fabric of our social becoming,” a fabric consisting of threads that hold us together and in which we build meanings in space and across time. This sentiment was expressed by the copreneurs as they spoke about growing together as a family and business, that there's not much that they do not do together, and what it means to them to be a “we,” not just an “I.” We can see their “inner-joining” in their comments about their consideration and care for each other, for their family and for the business, and how their differences complement each other and help them navigate both work and family spaces.

Zahavi (2021), a phenomenologist, argues that although “we-experience” is sometimes conflated with empathy, they are different because empathy is an “I” experience in that I might understand your feeling but not share it. Empathy is therefore directed towards the other person. He elaborates by saying that we-experience involves some form of emotional sharing or an emotional bond that we experience from within—just as the copreneurs experience togetherness within their living, everyday relationship in both pre-reflective and reflective ways (Schutz, 1967). A we-experience is implicated in the copreneurs’ talk in the form of a deep emotional sensitivity and practical interconnectedness which recognizes the fundamental importance of love and support for each other. Unlike many work relationships which are instrumental, even in small to medium family businesses, for copreneurial couples there is an emotional bond that crosses the boundaries of work and home: They work in the business (together), discussions about the business take place when and where needed (together), and balancing work–family life involves an ongoing mutual understanding of each other's needs and of the business.

We suggest that from this phenomenological perspective, togetherness can be seen as a form of relational attunement and emotional sharing—a fundamental intersubjective ontological we-experience of belonging together through an “inner connectedness” (Walther, 1923, p. 33), which copreneurs expressed as they talked about our business, our family, our home, and each other. Relational attunement encompasses an emotional sense of togetherness that emerges when I understand myself as not alone but entwined with you and I feel an experience is ours. This is embedded in the couple's deep reliance and sensitivity to each other's needs, emotions and to the well-being of each other and their relationship.

Relational attunement played out in very practical ways as couples figured out their business/family lives together in their “living social relationship” (Schutz, 1967, p. 162), for example, opening a bottle of wine, talking and making plans. The copreneurs were also attuned to how their individual differences complement each other, help them navigate their work–family challenges, and enrich their partnership, for example, Adonis seeing himself as the car and Maria as the driver. Relational attunement also involves a knowing-of-each-other as seen in Maria's comments about doing things without asking, Akis's comment about he and his wife's “practical minds,” and Debbie's comment about decisions not being like a decision … all indicate a mutual understanding embedded in their everyday and ongoing relationship. This is critical as business and family life grow over time and the challenges of navigating the work–family interface may become more acute.

Relational attunement is therefore different to empathy, which in the literature is often constructed as an inner mental state, a psychological construct or a cognitive process (e.g., Tolentino et al., 2022). Relational attunement encompasses emotional sharing and a “we” sensitivity that is not deliberate or planned, but a spontaneous pre-cognitive and sometimes visceral experience (Merleau-Ponty, 1962; Zahavi, 2021; Zahavi & Rochat, 2015) and knowing-of-each-other as, for example, Maria sensing when she needs to become the “persona” in the bar to help relax her tired husband. Copreneurs were attuned to—and felt—each other's thoughts, emotions, fears, and stress about their business and family life, and discussed them continually to shape a common understanding of everyday goings-on in business and family life. In this context, relational attunement and emotional sensitivity are embedded in their intersubjective relationship as an emotional bond or feeling of togetherness. Thus, relational attunement is embedded in the relationship of each copreneurial couple because, as Zahavi and Salice (2016, p. 519) note, “When an experience is shared, each partner is not only conscious of the other's experiencing, but identifies with and incorporates the other's perspective.”

We suggest that togetherness goes beyond empathy for another, to feelings of being in it (work and family) together, which embraces an attunement to their relationship and an emotional sharing that involves feelings of care for each other at home and work, despite differences. For copreneurial couples where boundaries between family and business are often blurred physically, symbolically and temporally, relational attunement is critical to both domains. We therefore supplement existing work on the family–work interface by proposing that togetherness, from a phenomenological perspective, emphasizes a living relationship between people—a way of being that we have noted encompasses solicitude and feelings of care for each other that represents a deep sense of “we-ness.” It is about the experience of what it means to be together in both emotional and in practical ways.

Conclusion

Fletcher (2024, p. 82) observes that more research is needed on the emotional stresses and strains of copreneurial life. We present a new perspective on navigating the work–family interface that humanizes how copreneurs navigate the challenges of family and business life together in their everyday relationship with each other, that is, what this means and feels like in daily practical acts of intentionality, consideration, and respect.

We Bring Two Contributions

Togetherness as Relational Attunement and Emotional Sharing: Togetherness offers a different theoretical lens that enhances our understanding of how copreneurial couples experience and navigate the challenges of work–family life every day in practical ways of relating and being together as a couple. As such, it offers a fresh viewpoint by prioritizing the lived human, relational, and emotional facets of the work–family interface. Togetherness as relational attunement and emotional sharing involves a mutual sensitivity and a concern and care for each other, for family, and business that is expressed in practical, sometimes habitual and small ways. This differs from theories of spousal support, which define support as “the amount of instrumental aid, emotional concern, and informational and/or appraisal functions” (Helmle et al., 2014, p. 116). It also differs from theories of empathy because it is embedded in a knowing-of-each-other or inner connectedness. While studies note that relationships in couple businesses are important (Cruz & Hamilton, 2019; El Shoubaki et al., 2022), when relationships are studied they are often conceptualized in terms of relational factors, capabilities, family dynamics, or familial resources (e.g., Franco & Piceti, 2020; McGrath & O’Toole, 2018). Our study explains what it feels like to be a copreneur and to relate with one's partner to address these challenges in everyday life.

Phenomenology doesn’t develop theory in the conventional sense, but asks us to reflect on our and others’ experience. By prioritizing lived experience, the notion of togetherness encourages future studies to delve deeper into the subjective realities, feelings, and relational sensitivities of copreneurs, rather than solely on external behaviors or outcomes. This can lead to richer, more nuanced understandings of the work–family interface. Additional insights could be generated, and work–family balance theories extended, by studies of the lived experience of copreneurs in different business and cultural contexts, and interviews conducted with both couples together could shed light on how they jointly navigate relational issues. In five of the seven couples in our study, partners came from different cultural backgrounds, and an interesting area of research could explore the potential impact of cultural differences on navigating the work–family interface. Finally, a further avenue of research could be a longitudinal study of copreneurs to explore how they navigate their work–family interface over time. Longitudinal studies could extend our understanding of how the work–family interface changes as families grow and age, and address potential generational challenges as children do, or do not, become involved in the business.

Because phenomenology generates insights that resonate and provoke others to reflect on how the issues might relate to their life, there are practical implications for couples, consultants and coaches who can adapt or develop their own ways of navigating the challenges they face. Our findings suggest that copreneurs can benefit from reflecting on practical ways of addressing the demands of their business while simultaneously fulfilling their individual and familial needs. This involves recognizing the significance of paying attention to their relationship, cultivating mutual sensitivity, and understanding how their unique qualities and their similarities and differences can complement each other and enhance their partnership. Consultants and coaches can also develop strategies to help couples cultivate a mutual sensitivity and understanding how their unique qualities can enhance their partnership: Offering ideas to help them find their own practical ways of navigating the blurred boundaries of work and family life, for example, by reaching agreement on what can be discussed where and when and carving time to be together as a family.

Methodological: In-depth phenomenological studies of family businesses are rare, despite ongoing calls for broader interpretive phenomenological studies such as ours (Cope, 2011; Rajasinghe et al., 2021). Our second contribution is therefore methodological in illustrating how IPA can contribute to our understanding of embodied and experiential meanings (Finlay, 2009) that copreneurs give to their lives. IPA is idiographic and inductive and can be criticized for not offering generalized, theoretical abstractions provided by other methodologies. Instead, a phenomenological approach responds to Kanov's (2021) call to humanize our research and suggest that future research adopts this methodology to capture the “aliveness” of life (p. 85): Phenomenology's rich descriptions expand knowledge through resonance, which can generate reflection in relation to our own and others’ circumstances, and potentially meaningful action in our own lives. As Van Maanen (1990, p. 13) observed, phenomenology is an “evocative speaking, a primal telling, wherein we aim to involve the voice in an original singing of the world”—a means of theorizing the complexities of life more humanly (Cunliffe, 2022).

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Ann L Cunliffe

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Appendix

Appendix 3

Example of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) Transcript

Personal Experiential Themes	Original Transcript	Exploratory Comments
Mutual communication Being together Calming him Relationship Mutual understanding Being together at work and home Mutual consideration for one another	Interviewee: You know we are still, so together, we don’t have a problem. I can, if he's stressed or angry or anything. I will be closer to him because I’m the only one that can make him calm. If something happens, if someone did some mistakes or anything, I have to be there. If I’m not there, then no one can calm him, I’m the only one. Researcher: The only one? Interviewee: Yes [laughs] we have a very strange relationship [we laugh] oh really, I’m happy. Many people ask me, how do you have a business together? It's not going to make it if they fight and no, we finish work and we go out maybe we go home and open a bottle of wine and talk about what happened today and what we can do together, and we always make plans together. He never makes a decision without asking me and the same with me. We always make decisions together. I don’t mean that we always agree every time of course. We always find a solution to be ok.	Together. Husband relies on her emotionally. She has coping mechanisms in order to calm him down. How does he talk about stress and calmness? Communicating and reflecting on the day. Discussing how they could have done things better. Mutual understanding and cooperating. They don’t always agree but it's not a problem because they always find a solution. Complete respect for the other's opinion

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