Next-generation commitment in family firms in Ethiopia

Family businesses are the dominant form of enterprise globally, and their long-term survival depends critically on the willingness of next-generation family members to commit to the business (Gomez-Mejia et al., 2020; Sharma, 2004). Drawing on organisational commitment theory (Meyer and Allen, 1991), family business scholars have identified three bases of commitment that shape next-generation members' decisions to pursue careers in the family firm: affective commitment, based on emotional identification with the firm; normative commitment, based on a felt duty or obligation to remain; and continuance commitment, based on the perceived costs of leaving (Sharma and Irving, 2005; Dawson et al., 2015). These three forms of commitment have been shown to influence not only whether next-generation members join the family business but also the quality of their involvement and the likelihood that they will sustain that involvement over time (Dawson et al., 2015; Sharma and Irving, 2005).

The commitment literature in family business has developed primarily in connection with succession research, which has mostly explained the passing of ownership and leadership from one generation to the next by focusing on the attitudes and activities of the generation in charge and the firm-level processes that facilitate succession (Discua Cruz et al., 2013; Gagné et al., 2021; Garcia et al., 2019; Long and Chrisman, 2014). This literature has mostly presented the next-generation as relatively homogenous and passive actors in these processes (Banerjee et al., 2024; De Massis et al., 2016), and studies focusing on the next-generation oscillate between contradictory pictures of them as either little interested in entering the family business (Sieger et al., 2021; Zellweger, 2017; Zellweger et al., 2011) or as highly motivated by autonomy (Akhter, 2016) and prone to engage in external venturing (Chua et al., 2011; Steier, 2007). As a result, there is limited knowledge of how commitment develops, shifts, and erodes over time and across different life stages, and even less about the experiences of those who, unlike children, participate without any prospect of succession, such as extended family members. There is also limited knowledge about what drives next-generation members to disengage from the family business, or how sustained commitment shapes those who stay (Basly and Saunier, 2020; Mahto et al., 2020). Developing knowledge in connection to this is important because commitment decisions by next-generation members shape not only individual career trajectories but also the continuity and governance of firms that are central to employment and economic life in many countries.Table A1 

Furthermore, extant literature has been built almost entirely on studies in Western, developed economies (Bruton et al., 2008; Gomez-Mejia et al., 2020; Lyons et al., 2024). These societies are characterised by nuclear families of small size (Danes et al., 2009; Kraus et al., 2011; Sharma, 2004), well-functioning labour markets, secure property rights, and legal frameworks that promote individual entrepreneurship and contractual clarity (Zahra and Wright, 2011). Family businesses are equally dominant in developing countries (Estrada-Robles et al., 2018; Liu, 2018), but these nations exhibit underdeveloped legal systems, weak property rights institutions (Bennedsen et al., 2015; Bruton et al., 2008; Khavul et al., 2009), and frequently changing regulations. These conditions shape how next-generation members experience choice, obligation, and opportunity in relation to the family business in ways that differ substantially from Western contexts. In Africa in particular, families are characterised by collective cultures, extended kinship systems, and hierarchical authority structures, meaning that the boundary between family duty and career choice is far less distinct (Abebe, 2008; Idang, 2015; Khavul et al., 2009; Kupangwa et al., 2024; Murithi et al., 2020; Smith, 2009). Extended family members have legitimate claims on the resources, employment, and hospitality of family businesses (Khavul et al., 2009; Smith, 2009), and the obligation to participate can precede and override individual career preferences. In such contexts, commitment cannot be understood primarily as a matter of individual identification or rational calculation, and existing knowledge about how social obligation and structural constraint shape next-generation commitment remains limited.

Ethiopia represents a context in which these dynamics are especially salient. While previous studies have sometimes treated Africa as relatively homogeneous, there are important cross-country differences (Anyanwu et al., 2025; Cerdeira et al., 2023), and Ethiopia has several distinctive features that make it a particularly relevant setting in which to examine them. Its inheritance law guarantees equal rights to all biological children regardless of their contribution to the family business, a legal structure with no parallel in most Western succession research and one that directly shapes the incentive to invest sustained effort in the family firm. Its extended kinship system generates obligations to house, educate, and employ relatives beyond the nuclear family, and Ethiopian family structures are strongly shaped by intergenerational authority and social obligations toward relatives and community members that influence expectations around resource sharing, employment, and business participation (Kassa, 2016, 2017). Its institutional environment, characterised by bureaucratic inefficiency, inconsistent and frequently changing regulations, and constrained access to formal credit (Biru et al., 2021, 2025; Fanta, 2015), paired with limited formal employment opportunities for young people (Denano et al., 2023; Mohammed-Shuker and Hashim-Sadik, 2024), means that joining the family business is often the only realistic option. Ethiopia also has one of the highest fertility rates in the world, averaging seven children per woman, and a high rate of child labour indicating that children are often integrated into working life from an early age (Haile and Haile, 2012). With family firms accounting for the large majority of private employment in Ethiopia and similar economies, understanding why next-generation members leave or stay has direct consequences for business continuity, family welfare, and broader economic development.

This study speaks directly to a growing body of work on African family businesses and context-sensitive entrepreneurship research (Krueger et al., 2021; Orole et al., 2026). Research in this field has shown that family business processes in Sub-Saharan Africa are structured by informal kinship expectations and institutional voids rather than formal planning (Orole et al., 2026), that extended family obligations create governance contexts that theory developed for Western settings does not account for (Grimm et al., 2013; Murithi et al., 2020), and that cultural norms and informal practices shape how family members engage with family businesses in ways that differ substantially from Western patterns (Birgach and Habba, 2023; Owusu-Acheampong et al., 2024). What this literature has not yet examined is how these structural conditions translate into the commitment dynamics of individual next-generation members. This study responds to calls for more research on African family businesses (Odame and Hinson, 2024; Singh, 2024; Tessema et al., 2025; Urban and Nonkwelo, 2022).

Against this background, we ask: How do next-generation family members' commitments to their family firms evolve and shape their decisions to remain in or leave the family business? We address this question through a qualitative, retrospective processual multiple-case study of eight next-generation family members across three family firms in Ethiopia. We trace how commitment developed, shifted, and in many cases eroded over the course of participants' involvement in the family business. Our findings contribute to the literatures on next-generation commitment in family firms, African family business research, and context-sensitive entrepreneurship (Agyapong and Acquaah, 2021; Dagoudo et al., 2024; Eze et al., 2021; Khavul et al., 2009).

While this study offers several insights, its two primary theoretical contributions are the introduction of venture pull as a novel mechanism of de-commitment in family firms, and the contextualization of next-generation commitment within institutional voids and kinship obligations. Underpinning these contributions, we show that next-generation commitment is not a stable condition but an evolving process, and that children and extended family members follow structurally distinct commitment trajectories shaped by different ownership expectations and kinship obligations.

Next-generation family members' decisions to join (Schröder and Schmitt-Rodermund, 2013; Schröder et al., 2011) and pursue a career in the family business (Dawson et al., 2015) are shaped by the level and type of their commitment (Sharma and Irving, 2005). Commitment is a force that emerges as a frame of mind or psychological state compelling an individual toward a course of action relevant to one or more targets (Meyer and Herscovitch, 2001; Meyer et al., 2002). Commitment positively influences family members' identification and emotional attachment to the family business which, in turn, impacts owners' willingness for the continuity of the firm (Basly and Saunier, 2020). Moreover, the environment (society) at large affects the commitment of family members in a family business context (Lubatkin et al., 2007; Schröder et al., 2011).

Next-generation members can pursue careers in the family business for a variety of reasons. They might join and remain in the family business not to disappoint their parents, or due to lack of better employment options outside the family business (Schröder and Schmitt-Rodermund, 2013). Sharma and Irving (2005) identified three commitment trajectories influencing family members to pursue a career in the family business: affective or emotional attachment to the organization, normative, resulting from a feeling of indebtedness, and continuance, that is, concern for work and non-work-related costs (Meyer and Allen, 1991; Meyer and Herscovitch, 2001). While continuance commitment is associated with lack of perceived alternatives and has a weak link to discretionary behaviours (Meyer et al., 2002; Sharma and Irving, 2005), both affective and normative commitments exhibit behaviours that go beyond the call of duty.

Affective commitment is defined as “emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organization” (Meyer and Allen, 1991, p. 67) or “a psychological state that binds the individual to the organization” (Allen and Meyer, 1990, p. 14). It is the most desirable form of commitment for enterprises (Schwaiger and Zehrer, 2022) because it prompts an employee to contribute more to organizational performance and do more than what the organization expects of them (Kazlauskaite et al., 2006). In the context of family businesses, affective commitment is based on a family member's strong identification with, and desire to contribute to the family business (Sharma and Irving, 2005). “Individuals can experience this mind-set when they perceive an alignment between identity of self and that of an organization, as well as career interests and opportunities available in the organization” (Sharma and Irving, 2005, p. 19).

Family members' exposure to the family business and parental emotional support reinforce affective commitment (Gimenez-Jimenez et al., 2021; Lyons et al., 2024). Parental support enhances family members' sense of importance and identification with the business (Memili et al., 2013), and involvement through internships and apprenticeships enhances next-generation skills and socialization (Garcia et al., 2019). Affective commitment also develops through positive experience, growing competence, and social belonging within the firm, shaped by parental behavior and family relationships that signal recognition and trust (Greguras and Diefendorff, 2009; Garcia et al., 2019). When next-generation members' needs, goals, and values align with the family enterprise, affective commitment fosters loyalty, engagement, and a sense of belonging, making them more likely to pursue a career within the firm (Dawson et al., 2015; McMullen and Warnick, 2015). Contrastingly, affective commitment is jeopardized when family members perceive that their job skills are not valuable outside the family firm. Family members' non-involvement or disengagement also leads to weaker identification with the family business and often results in a withdrawal from the family business (Basly and Saunier, 2020). Family conflicts also increase emotional costs and weaken family members’ identification, lowering trust among family members, resulting in a lower affective commitment (Rau, 2013; Basly and Saunier, 2020). Importantly, strong affective commitment will not stop a family member from examining options and thinking of greener pastures in other companies (Mahto et al., 2020).

Next-generation commitment in family firms is structurally differentiated by kinship position. Children, as inheritance insiders, experience commitment shaped by anticipated ownership and intra-family hierarchy, whereas extended family members, lacking inheritance rights, experience commitment shaped by guardianship-based inclusion, obligation, and dependency. These positional differences generate distinct commitment trajectories and exit pathways.

While affective commitment positively pulls an individual to an organization, normative commitment pushes the individual to remain in the organization by “a sense of ought to behave in a certain way” (Sharma and Irving, 2005, p. 17; emphasis in the original). Due to normative commitment, family members work in the family organization due to obligation (Meyer and Allen, 1991) or in order not to disappoint their parents (Schröder and Schmitt-Rodermund, 2013). Because of family expectations and family orientation (Sharma and Irving, 2005), working for the family business can be perceived to be “the right thing to do” (Gellatly et al., 2006; Meyer and Parfyonova, 2010). Additionally, high financial, social, or psychological investments made on family members can result in normative commitment (Jaros et al., 1993). Findings from non-Western contexts confirms this pattern: Pramudya et al. (2022) show that filial piety, a cultural obligation to honor and support one's parents, drives career interest alignment and normative commitment among family business members in Indonesia, a dynamic closely analogous to the childhood obligation we identify in the Ethiopian context.

A normative mind set is a stronger “binding force” than affective commitment (Meyer and Herscovitch, 2001) and this obligation may not be perceived as negative because of their sustained satisfaction and positive relations with family members that fulfill their expectations (Dawson et al., 2015). Hence, family members working in the family business can derive satisfaction by conforming to environmental pressures and norms (Schröder and Schmitt-Rodermund, 2013). In contrast, dominant values of liberty and independence can inspire next-generation members to pursue their own ways rather than participating in the family business (Sharma and Manikutty, 2005).

Continuance commitment results from family members' costs of leaving the organization (Dawson et al., 2015; Meyer and Herscovitch, 2001) and the opportunity costs of not working in the family business (Meyer and Allen, 1991; Sharma and Irving, 2005). When these costs are high, the next-generation members can decide to stay and work in the family business (Dawson et al., 2015). Specifically, they are more likely to remain in the organization when they perceive lack of alternatives, identify few opportunities in the job market (Meyer and Allen, 1991; Meyer and Herscovitch, 2001) or are concerned about missing financial wealth inheritance (Dawson et al., 2015). Next-generation members also show a tendency to remain in the family business if they perceive that leaving it might result in status change, the erosion of interpersonal relations, and loss of financial stability.

A family member with high continuance commitment views the family business as the “default” career path because they might be exposed to limited experience and not perceive attractive opportunities elsewhere (Dawson et al., 2015; Meyer and Herscovitch, 2001). Conversely, if they perceive that there are low social and financial costs and better opportunities outside the family business, their commitment ripples down and they are more likely to leave (Garcia et al., 2019). When the opportunity costs of staying in the family business are high, family members will show greater interest in exploring other job opportunities (Mahto et al., 2020). Thus, family members with superior job opportunities elsewhere (Khanin et al., 2012) are more likely to consider quitting the family business despite high levels of commitment.

In sum, research has demonstrated that various forms of commitment play a significant role in explaining next-generation involvement in family businesses. Among these, affective and normative commitments have emerged as particularly strong predictors of the willingness to remain in the business. However, existing studies have largely overlooked the empirical contexts that shape such decisions, with limited attention paid to settings in less developed countries. Further, there are reasons to anticipate that commitment dynamics in African family businesses differ from those in Western settings. African contexts are characterised by collectivist cultures and kinship ties (Khavul et al., 2009; Kupangwa et al., 2024; Layefa et al., 2022), and strong institutional and family embeddedness that shape relationships and obligations at work (Hack-Polay et al., 2020). In family businesses specifically, commitment is embedded in family responsibilities rather than contractual employment relationships (Khavul et al., 2009; Kupangwa, 2025), and family relational dynamics mediate firm outcomes in ways that reflect these embedded obligations (Méndez et al., 2025). Institutional informality and relational governance further shape how commitment is developed and sustained (Murithi et al., 2020; Zoogah et al., 2015). These contextual features suggest that empirical observations of next-generation commitment in African family businesses are likely to differ from what has been observed in Western contexts.

Across Ethiopian family firms, next-generation members are not a homogeneous group. This study distinguishes between biological children of owners and extended family members (nephews, nieces, and other kin), as these groups occupy fundamentally different institutional positions. Children are embedded in inheritance rights, parental authority, and sibling structures, while extended family members participate through kinship obligation, guardianship, and conditional access to opportunity without inheritance rights. These distinct positions shape different expectations, constraints, and long-term commitment trajectories within family businesses.

We address our research question with a multiple-case theory-building approach (Dawson and Hjorth, 2012; Heale and Twycross, 2018; Leppäaho et al., 2016). Case studies, that is, “empirical inquiry that closely examines contemporary phenomenon (the case) within its real-world context” are particularly applicable for addressing “why” and “how” processual questions in a particular context (Miles et al., 2014; Schoch, 2020; Yin, 2014, p. 194). Multiple cases are effective because their replication logic typically produces more robust, parsimonious, and generalizable theory (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007). We also use an embedded design with multiple units of analysis (i.e. family firms and next-generation family members) that allows us to improve the richness and accuracy of our findings and to ground our theory on multiple observations. Specifically, our approach (described later) examines eight next-generation family members' commitments in three different family firms.

Conducting qualitative fieldwork in low-income and institutionally informal settings raises particular methodological challenges that standard guidelines do not always address. Halme et al. (2024) argue that qualitative research conducted in emerging markets and low-income contexts requires explicit attention to how local conditions, including power asymmetries, informality, and researchers' insider-outsider positioning, shape data collection and interpretation. We follow their guidance in this regard. The lead author is a native Ethiopian with direct familiarity with the cultural and institutional context, which enabled rapport-building with participants who would otherwise be reluctant to share sensitive business information with outsiders (Riar et al., 2022). At the same time, the involvement of researchers without Ethiopian backgrounds in the analysis helped to surface assumptions that might otherwise go unquestioned. This combination of insider access and outsider scrutiny is consistent with the kind of methodological reflexivity that Halme et al. (2024) recommend for research in such settings.

According to the World Bank (2023), with a population of over 128 million, Ethiopia is the second most populous nation in Africa next to Nigeria. The country does not have a good history of private business because historically running a business was not considered as a nobleman's work. For the first time, formally, the government introduced the investment Proclamation No. 242/1966 to encourage business startups by providing tax relief, access to land and buildings, public utilities and other advisory and administrative facilitations. This encouragement was short-lived; however, as the 1974 military coup removed the king and halted the nascent development of private business. The country subsequently joined the Soviet Socialist block and nationalized private property, including family businesses, through the Proclamation No.26/1975. However, following the collapse of the Soviet Socialist block, “liberation fighters” removed the military government in 1991 and “liberalized” the economy to make the environment “conducive” for businesses. Table 1 shows the various actions taken by different Ethiopian governments.

However, according to the World Bank group economic report the situation remains dire for businesses. In 2015, out of 189 countries, Ethiopia ranked 132 for ease of doing business, 165 for access to credit, 110 for tax compliance, 181 for contract enforcement, and 141 for insolvency resolutions. The World Bank report from 2016 to 2020 also did not show any improvement, signaling the country's continuous weak institutions and business unfriendliness.

Beyond the business context, Sub-Saharan Africa is characterized by high fertility rates, with many children born per parent (Smith, 2009). Ethiopia has one of the highest fertility rates, averaging 7 children per woman (Haile and Haile, 2012). Furthermore, the concept of family extends beyond the nuclear family, encompassing a broader network of extended family members (Abebe, 2008; Murithi et al., 2020).

The selection of a case should be based on an “opportunity to learn” about a given phenomenon (Stake, 1995) and its “suitability for illuminating and extending relationships and logic among the constructs” (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007, p. 27). Because family members are often reluctant to share insights about their business activities with outsiders (Riar et al., 2022), we also selected cases based on accessibility (Ritchie et al., 2013). In addition to accessibility, cases were selected based on the following criteria: (1) the founder of the core family business was still active, so that next-generation commitments were not contingent on which generation currently led the business; and (2) some family members sustained their commitment to the family business while others had discontinued it. This variation was crucial for understanding different types of commitment trajectories and their evolution over time. Based on these criteria, family members from three-family businesses were sampled. Table 2 details our selected cases.

Shina family business: The business was established as an informal and small business in 1970 by two brothers, Sharew and Yayeh. In the 1990s, it was re-organized as “Shina industrial and commercial PLC” with equal ownership rights of the two brothers. Currently, the business is engaged in trade (sesame seeds, pulses, iron bars, corrugated sheets, tires and chemicals), manufacturing (polypropylene factory and water bottling), and hotel and warehouse rentals. The family has a 10-story building of which they use two floors as head office and the remaining flats are rented out to other organizations. The company is registered in the high taxpayers' category and the number of employees totals 330. The founders (Sharew and Yayeh) had nine male children and all contributed to the growth and expansion of the family business. Some of the children (like Seraw) continued his commitment, while others (Enku and Sefa) have discontinued their commitment to the family business and started their own venture. Figure 1 presents the family tree of the Shina family.

Jemo family business: Jemo started informal grain merchandise in the 1980s and over time diversified into various sectors. In the 1990s, due to government pressure, the family business reorganized some of the business units as PLC and others as sole proprietorships. The PLC consists of trading and a flour factory whereas sole proprietorships consist of gravel crushers, warehouse rentals, fuel stations, fuel trucks, coffee hullers, and construction machinery rentals. Starting from 2019, the coffee huller ceased its operation due to the political instability in the country. Jemo owns 70% of the PLC and 100% of the sole proprietors. The contribution of children (Debol and Jema) and extended family members (Welelaw and Yazew) has been important for the growth of the business. The company is registered in the high taxpayers' category and the number of employees totals 183. The father (Jemo) gave 15% of ownership to his two sons (Debol and Jema). Jemo's brother, Welelaw and his nephew Yazew has discontinued their commitment to the family business and started their own ventures. Figure 2 presents the family tree of the Jemo family.

Tadele Telaye Family Business: Tadele Telaye started an informal trading business at the end of 1990s. Over time, it evolved into transportation, warehouses, and gravel crushing services. Tadele is the sole owner of the business and in 2010, he reorganized the informal trading venture into a formal sole proprietorship. The trading business includes exports of coffee, pulses and sesame seed and imports of dump trucks. The business also expanded into transportation, currently owning 4 cargo trucks and 20 fuel trucks. In addition, the business also has 4 warehouses at Humera, Gelan and Gonder. In 2018 a new gravel crusher was acquired. The business is registered in the medium taxpayers' category and has a total of 82 employees. All the children of the founders are still minors, and they are not involved in the family business yet. Tadele's orphan nephews (Teferi, Tezazu and Yoseph) have contributed for the development of his business, but Teferi and Yoseph discontinued their commitment to the family business and started their own ventures. Figure 3 presents the family tree of the Tadele Telaye family.

Our study relies on several data sources: (1) interviews with next-generation members in each family business, including family members who discontinued their commitment to the family business and started their own ventures, and family members who have sustained their commitment to the family business; (2) interviews with other informed sources such as the founders and owners of the family business; (3) interviews with an independent lawyer who has experience of consulting family business in Ethiopia, and (4) on-site observations. Such varied data sources enable triangulation and help improve accuracy (De Massis and Kotlar, 2014; Eisenhardt, 1989). Table 3 summarizes these major data sources and the participants from each of the cases.

We conducted semi-structured interviews to collect data from informants within their social context (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2017). We aimed to approach and interpret the world from our participants' perspectives (Qu and Dumay, 2011). To ensure consistency, all interviews were performed by the first author, who knows the local language and context. All interviews were recorded digitally with permission and transcribed. For the sake of uniformity, all participants were asked to introduce themselves and describe their background and relationship with the family business and the family members (owners, children and extended family members), and why family members had (dis)continued their commitment to the family business. The participants were interviewed separately, which also helped us to triangulate key facts and gather alternative perspectives from multiple positions (Marques et al., 2022). On average, the interviews lasted between one and two hours. The first author also took field notes while performing all interviews to complement the data collected by interviews. During interviews, interruptions were common. These breaks helped the interviewer to observe interactions between family members and/or people outside the family circle. The motivation behind the observations was to understand these interactions in a natural setting. As such, the observations helped us gain an inside perspective of the family dynamics and behaviours in the respective settings (Maree, 2016). These observations also enhanced the credibility of the interview data (Opoku et al., 2016).

To protect participant confidentiality, the interviewer personally transcribed all recorded interviews, producing 98 pages of notes. The case analysis then began by listening to the audio recordings and reading the transcripts, allowing for deeper immersion in the data (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2017). The transcription process offered the researchers an opportunity to revise all interviews and familiarise themselves with the data to obtain better understanding about the nature of the context (King, 2012).

The results of these various data sources are chronological narratives of each family that include life events, voiced reasons for the initial commitment to the family business of all participants, their development of business experience and progress in multiple responsibilities and changes in their commitments. The narratives also include issues in each family such as lack of decision autonomy in the next-generation, sibling rivalry, marriages and other factors that contribute to oscillations in the next-generation commitments to the family business. Collectively, these narratives provide a holistic view of each family firm's history and every participant from multiple perspectives.

Within-case analysis: Following theory-building from multiple-case methods (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007), we began by preparing case histories for each family business and identified the next-generation family members who are the target of the study. The interviews with the next-generation of family members were useful in providing rich details. Interviews with other participants were essential for understanding and corroborating events, activities, actions, and decisions. The leading author wrote initial case drafts, and the others reviewed the data to form an independent view. The chronological narrative of each family and participant was reconstructed retrospectively by combining data from all participants in each family. These individual accounts were consistent and collectively validated the facts of each case, including the evolution of each family and family business, and the timeline of decisions “to pursue careers with their respective family business” (Sharma and Irving, 2005, p. 16) for each next-generation participant. In addition to producing the case histories, the transcribed materials were coded manually (Braun and Clarke, 2022). We analyzed each next-generation participant's account broadly and in relation to our research question (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2014). The first author closely examined the interview transcripts, immersing himself in the data to identify respondent expressions relevant to the study, and the other authors consulted the data to form an independent view. To ensure analytical consistency, authors compared their independent coding in regular team discussions, reconciling interpretive differences by returning to the primary data. This process of continuous collaborative coding, in which disagreements were resolved through deliberation and consensus rather than majority rule, is consistent with a consensual qualitative approach to rigor (Hill et al., 1997). This approach offered both depth and flexibility (Elifneh et al., 2024), and an informal audit trail was maintained through analytic memos and records of team discussions that documented the evolution of key interpretive decisions. Specifically, to capture types of commitment trajectories, we relied on established definitions in the family business literature (Sharma and Irving, 2005) and then inductively identified the sources of each type of commitment within each next-generation family member. The type of commitment experienced by each participant over time, and the sources that drove such commitments, were largely inferred from participants' individual reflections. These narratives, however, were consistently confirmed in interviews with other family members, providing respondent triangulation that strengthened confidence in our interpretations. This suggests a high level of consistency across data sources. Early in our analysis, we identified that, at the time of our data collection, some adult participants remained committed to the family business, while many had disengaged to pursue professional careers. Prompted by this observation, we further examined our data and found that the adult participants engaged in the family business showed no intention of quitting. We associated these with sustained commitment, and those who had disengaged from the family business with de-commitment. The family trees presented in the sampling section include these next-generation participants. Interested in what could drive these two outcomes, we followed a similar inductive approach to the sources of commitment by exploring the sources of de-commitment. Due to the nature of our data, changes in commitment types and shifts from commitment to de-commitment are retrospective.

Two of the authors are native Ethiopians. One of them, the leading author, spent substantial time during his academic studies in Sweden. This hybrid nature helped him gain reflexivity about the cultural norms and principles in Ethiopia that influence family businesses and permeate the findings. Concretely, his dual positioning enabled him to surface tacit cultural assumptions, such as the normative weight of filial obligation in Ethiopian family enterprises, which might otherwise have gone unquestioned, while his international exposure provided critical distance from those same norms. The other two authors have no Ethiopian background and approached the analysis without any prior understanding of the empirical setting. Their outsider perspective served as a consistent check on culturally specific interpretations, prompting the team to make implicit reasoning explicit and to test whether findings were grounded in data or assumptions. The combination of perspectives within the research team, together with close engagement with the data by all researchers, enabled the team to identify subtle patterns and themes (Nelson et al., 2021) and to gain shared, nuanced insights (Castleberry and Nolen, 2018). We resolved the few discrepancies in our independent analysis by returning to the data.

Cross-case analysis: We drew on family members from three family businesses. A cross-case analysis was conducted comparing members who sustained their commitment with those who discontinued it. We also compared the commitment of children and extended family members. As we compared these four groups of participants, we looked for similarities and differences among them. In this process, we also looked for concepts we had coded in the within-case analysis (e.g. types of commitment) while being open to new ones. For example, marriage and sibling rivalry, and interventions by the family business owners that contributed to a “venture pull” driving de-commitment, were inductively identified as they repeatedly appeared in our case comparisons. We used tables and diagrams as part of our audit trail, making the analytic process transparent and the development of constructs traceable to strengthen our analysis. By identifying emerging patterns, we developed preliminary constructs (e.g. venture pull), relationships, and arguments grounded in theoretical reasoning and data, and refined them through replication logic (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2014) and existing research until we established the coherent framework presented in our findings.

Our analysis suggests that next-generation commitment is best understood as a dynamic trajectory rather than a fixed psychological state. Our findings reveal two structurally distinct categories of next-generation actors: children of founders and extended family members, whose commitment trajectories diverge due to differences in ownership rights, succession expectations, and kinship obligations. Specifically, our findings explain how children's and extended family members' commitments to the family business evolved, shaped by personal circumstances, dominant norms in the Ethiopian context, and interactions with other family members, including new relationships such as spouses. While in some participants changes in their commitments eventually resulted in de-commitment, that is, in decisions not to pursue their professional careers in the family firm, in others these changes were compatible with sustained commitment to remaining in the family firm. We observed these two paths both in children and extended family members, resulting in four distinct commitment patterns: children who sustained their commitment to the family business, children who did not, extended family members who sustained their commitment to the family business, and extended family members who did not. Our model (Figure 4) depicts these four distinct paths of evolving types of commitment to the family business, shaped by obligations, opportunities, and expectations within the family business system. Figure 4 presents the grounded model of our findings. The analytical data structure of our findings is included as an  Appendix.

Children's and extended family members' initial commitments to the family business were dominated by normative considerations across all participants, with extended family members also experiencing continuance commitment. These commitments emerged from sources shared by all participants (family trust and training) and from those specific to their status as children (childhood obligation) or as extended family members (unemployment and reciprocating guardianship). In what follows, we present each of these sources of commitment and explain how they contributed to our participants' commitment, driving their decision to join the family business.

Children and extended family members enter the family business through different structural logics: children through anticipated inheritance and family obligation, and extended family members through guardianship-based inclusion and lack of external employment alternatives. These entry conditions shape distinct early commitment foundations.

Childhood obligations: All our family business owners established their business for self-employment. They were lone operators of their respective businesses because they could not afford to hire employees. In this context, children, particularly firstborns, were subject to cultural expectations to participate in the family business. Sharew, the owner of Shina Commercial and Industrial, took it for granted that his children would be involved:

Children were expected to contribute to the household's economic activities either by working alongside their parents or stepping in for them when they attended to community matters such as weddings and funerals. This cultural norm extended beyond the elder children to younger siblings as well, fostering a normative commitment to the business across all of them. Sefa, son of Sharew, explained:

And Debol, son of the owners of Jemo PLC, confided:

This childhood obligation was exclusive to children. Other sources of normative commitment, such as family trust and training, affected all family members.

Family trust: As the business grew, it was required to comply with government regulations. For example, in the mid-1990s, the government introduced a law requiring large companies to maintain proper documentation for their business transactions, which posed challenges for less-educated family business owners. They did not want to hire external professionals for fear of revealing sensitive business information to government agencies, and instead sought help from professional family members. For instance, Debol, a member of the Jemo family business, initially left the family business to work at an international NGO. However, when his father faced a significant challenge, Debol did not ignore him. He left his well-paid position and returned to the family business to support his family professionally. Similarly, Sharew pleaded with his younger brother Yalew, who is a professional accountant, to quit his employment and assist the family business. He accepted and joined the family business. These decisions by Debol and Yalew to join the family business demonstrated a high level of normative commitment. Yalew shared his thoughts as follows:

Training: Just like the family children, young extended family members also came to live with the family business owners and attended school because their parents' homes were far from schools, or because their biological parents could not afford to send them to school. Other extended family members who lost their parents also came to live with the family business owners. In return, these extended family members supported their hosts by participating in the family business when they were not in school. This reciprocal relation between family business owners and extended family members stemmed from normative commitment. As a result, family businesses served as informal training grounds and apprenticeships, fostering the development of business knowledge and skills among children and extended family members. Next-generation family members not only gained practical experience but also built valuable networks with family business customers, suppliers, banks, and other institutions, connections that could influence their future career paths. This training typically stemmed from a sense of obligation, with parents feeling responsible for preparing the next-generation for business. In a way, children and extended family members could acquire both the competencies and relationships necessary for success in their future business journey. Enku, a child, explained:

Extended family members shared this perception. Yazew expressed:

Unemployment and reciprocating guardianship: Adult members of extended families joined the family business because they had limited employment options outside it. They migrated to towns in search of employment opportunities, and lacking sufficient financial resources, they stayed with the family-owned business. Because of the norm of reciprocating guardianship, the family business owners covered their living expenses until they found employment. However, most were unable to secure employment elsewhere due to limited skills and experience. Yazew expressed this common experience:

As a result, joining the family business became a last resort, contributing to continuance commitment. While contributing to the business, they, like the family children, also experienced family trust and received on-the-job training that prepared them for future career opportunities. Thus, in addition to the normative commitment that they shared with the children and the extended family members who had joined the family business in their youth, these extended family members also experienced a continuance commitment.

Capability development: Over time, children and extended family members became fully engaged in the family business. They gained extensive business experience and identified with the family business. They developed affective commitment by not limiting themselves to a particular task. They were entrusted with multiple responsibilities and performed duties of two to three non-family employees, thereby making significant contributions to the growth and expansion of the family business. Seraw recounted his experience as follows:

They have also worked beyond regular working hours and dedicated their lunch breaks, early mornings, late evenings, and sometimes weekends without expecting extra benefits. They also brought tasks home to finish in the evening. Yoseph pointed out:

As family members gained more experience and became older, their affective commitment towards the family business consistently declined. Marriage, excessive workload, and exclusion from ownership diminished family members' (both children and extended family members) affective commitments. In children, siblings' rivalry and a lack of decision autonomy also contributed to reductions in affective commitment to the family business. Extended family members do not have the right to inherit, and their influence on the family business (other than in carrying out their tasks) is minimal. Hence, these participants did not experience issues related to decision autonomy and sibling rivalry. Because normative and, in the case of extended family members, continuance commitment was sustained, this erosion in affective commitment did not always suffice to break the commitment of many participants. Others, however, abandoned the family business to pursue careers elsewhere. Available family business networks and owners' support instead enabled some participants to establish their own ventures, pulling them away from the family business. Below, we present each of these dynamics contributing to less engagement, explaining when relevant, how they distinctly affect children and extended family members.

Exclusion from ownership: Next-generation family members perceived that their economic ambitions were not fulfilled because the owners did not grant them ownership rights in the family business. Parents regarded children as economic assets and believed they had a natural right to their labour, expecting that the business would eventually be inherited by them. Sharew expressed his view: “I don't bury with the wealth.” However, extended family members are not entitled to inheritance rights, as the law designates children and spouses as the only rightful heirs. Yazew echoed:

Exclusion from decision-making: In the early stages, the children looked to the “father-figure” as the primary source of ideas and opportunity recognition, and as the ultimate authority in business matters. They followed every instruction without question, resulting in a harmonious parent-child relationship. However, as time passed, the children's business knowledge and experience grew. As they developed their capabilities, they began to identify opportunities and detect challenges independently, seeking a more active role alongside their parents or desiring to make decisions on their own. Yet, the parents held on to traditional views, encapsulated in the Amharic proverb “a daughter can't teach how to labour for her mother,” and were dismissive of their children's growing interest in contributing to decision-making. Sefa underlined the situation as follows:

The children grew increasingly disappointed as their parents dismissed promising business opportunities they had identified, leading to further declines in emotional attachment. The parents' adherence to traditional decision-making practices not only limited the business's potential to create wealth but also diminished the resources that would eventually pass on to the next-generation. As a result, next-generation family members reduced their affective commitment to the family business.

Excessive workload: Family business owners assigned next-generation family members to multiple responsibilities in the family business. They have the right to call and give instructions at any time: early in the morning, late evening, or even in the middle of the night. In return, next-generation family members accepted and carried out their instructions. Yazew shared his experience as follows:

Over time, however, the heavy workloads, combined with a lack of ownership and decision-making power, left next-generation family members feeling frustrated with their situations, which family dynamics made worse.

Family dynamics (marriage): Despite their frustration, before their marriage, children and extended family members continued to show strong commitment to the family business. As they grew older, they entered the next phase of life: marriage. Before marriage, next-generation family members were “soldiers” of their parents. They allotted all their time to the family business. It was after marriage that it became particularly difficult to devote all energy and time to the family business. Upon becoming husbands, they moved out of their parents' house and established their own independent households. This transition introduced new challenges for family members, as it brought additional responsibilities and created time conflicts with the demands of the family business. Tasks were delayed, leading to disappointment among business owners. Jemo expressed these challenges from the perspective of the business owner as follows:

Moreover, the wives of children and extended family members were unhappy when their husbands returned home late or brought unfinished business into their domestic life. Consequently, married family members experienced challenges in their work-life balance as they found themselves torn between the interests of two opposing parties: family business owners (parents) and their wives. Fulfilling one's interest is always at the cost of another party. Seraw stated as follows:

The decline in family members' affective commitment was further aggravated by parents' refusal to allow daughters-in-law to work in the family business. Next-generation family members wanted their spouses to become involved in the business to generate additional income for the new household. In contrast, parents wanted to limit their daughter-in-law's roles to a housewife and caregiver to the children, mirroring their own wives. Culturally, a husband's primary responsibility in Ethiopia is to ensure the financial security of the nuclear family-his wife and children. The desire to empower their immediate families and gain autonomy from the control exerted by the core family business owners further eroded affective commitment in next-generation family members. In children, affective commitment was additionally strained by siblings' rivalry.

Family dynamics (sibling rivalry): Sibling rivalry arose from the large number of children and varying levels of commitment to the family business. This form of rivalry is specific to children of the family business owners. In contrast, extended family members, whether experiencing rivalry with siblings or other employees or demonstrating low commitment, were subject to immediate dismissal, unlike the children, who are given more leeway.

As younger children complete high school or university, more members of the next-generation get involved in the family business. For example, in the Shina family business, the total number of children from the two parents (Sharew and Yeshanew) reached nine, and it was difficult to provide a position for every family member. Those who were not employed in their desired positions had little focus on their duties. They also refused to accept and implement instructions from their elder brothers and/or managers. The parents intervened to negotiate with their children and make them work in harmony. But their efforts were not successful, and Sharew explained:

The level of dedication among children varied significantly. While some gave their utmost effort, others contributed only the bare minimum, but they still received the same benefits. These discrepancies strained their relationships and caused more frustrations. The high-performing children began insisting that their parents deal with the less-engaged siblings. However, the parents remained firm in their desire to support all their children, explaining that their decision was based on family unity and fairness. Jemo explained:

Consequently, from the children's point of view, sustaining a high level of engagement did not yield additional benefits, further eroding affective commitment.

Across all participants, the combination of lack of ownership, excessive workload, and marriage deteriorated affective commitment. Children's affective commitment was additionally jeopardized by siblings' rivalry and a lack of decision-making autonomy. Extended family members are not entitled to inheritance in the family business, which also led to decline of affective commitment. Deteriorations in commitment alone were not sufficient to result in complete de-commitment. Surprisingly, the same actions that business owners took to repair their family members' affective commitment created in some next-generation participants what we call a venture pull, leading some of them to leave the family business to establish their own venture, thereby discontinuing their involvement. We label this process venture pull, defined as the process by which family business owners' deliberate attempts to sustain next-generation commitment inadvertently generate the resources, networks, and risk-buffering conditions that make independent venturing both viable and attractive, such that the actions taken to retain family members become the means by which those members are enabled to leave.

Family support: As the business owners witnessed the decline of their children and extended family members' affective commitment, they took measures in order to restore it. They gave their children non-business assets (for example, a house or a vehicle). Following their marriage, they also gave business assets such as construction machinery or trucks as “Gojjo Mawecha ^[1]” to their children and even devoted extended family members. Sefa expressed it as follows:

In our study, family business owners donated a dump truck, a cargo truck, or an excavator to married children and devoted extended family members. The owners' motive in handing over is to help married children generate additional income for their new families by renting out the assets to construction companies. In return, married children will remain committed to the family business. Typically, the children and extended family members used these assets to generate additional income by renting the construction machinery to construction companies or loaning the truck to a driver. Owners also established new business units under the legal ownership of devoted extended family members, sharing profits with them, as a strategy to sustain their commitment and protect both parties from financial risk. For example, Tadele established a transit business with ownership transferred to his nephew Yoseph, while Jemo established a hotel, warehouse, fuel station, and coffee huller under the ownership of his sister's son and younger brother respectively.

Business units established with legal ownership transferred to extended family members operate independently of the main family business, providing income continuity for both the founders' family and the extended family members in times of hardship. For extended family members, who have no inheritance rights despite their contributions to the business, this ownership transfer represents their primary form of long-term financial security. Jemo argued as follows:

Interestingly, children and extended family members could, and often did, use these resources as a base to start their own autonomous businesses and discontinue their commitment to the family business. We label this as venture pull.

Safety net: Furthermore, to maintain harmony among siblings, some parents also introduced a “safety net” policy. This entailed guaranteeing their children the right to employment in the family business should their independent ventures fail. In other words, children (not extended family members) enjoyed the common understanding that if the worst were to happen and their business failed, they would be able to return to the family business as an employee, allowing for continuance commitment. Essentially, this meant the risk of starting their own venture was perceived as minimal, further enhancing venture pull. Seraw explained it as follows.

Owning business: Though children have the right of inheritance following the death of their parents, the sustainability of the business is not guaranteed. Hence, rather than waiting for a portion of inheritance from the family business, in the absence of direct access to ownership, some preferred to start their venture so that they could own their own business without further delay. Yalew, from Shina Commercial and Industrial, explained:

In extended family members, this was even more pronounced, given their family capital development during their years in the family business and the thin expectations of inheriting, as presented by Teferi, from Tadele Telaye import-export:

In sum, because family members' affective commitment to the family business was short-lived, typically lasting only one or two years after they secured resources from the family business owners/parents, many participants experienced a venture pull to own their own business. Against the expectations of family business owners, family support and network, and (in the case of children) the safety net of being able to return to the family business if unsuccessful, further contributed to drifting these participants from the family business, who, leveraging the business's assets as stepping stones, established their own independent ventures.

But not all participants established their own ventures and de-committed from the family business; some remained committed to it. While deteriorating affective commitment and venture pull drove many next-generation family members to abandon the family business, some children remained in it because of a combination of ownership rights and feelings of obligation that continued to nurture normative commitment. For instance, Jemo gave 30% ownership rights to his sons, Debol and Sema. Seraw also secured 25% ownership from the family business, in addition to two excavators he had previously secured following his marriage. In contrast, those extended family members with sustained commitment continued to pursue their professional careers in the family business because, lacking sufficient entrepreneurial passion to pursue their own business, they enjoyed the indirect benefits of the family business.

Feeling of obligation and ownership right: Despite being presented with more attractive external opportunities, some children remained in the business primarily out of a sense of normative commitment, a perceived obligation to the family, even if they were not entirely satisfied with their sustained commitment to the family business. For example, as previously noted Debol quit his high-paying NGO post and returned to his family business because he lacked a reliable sibling to take his place. Trapped in his normative commitment to the family business, Debol shared the emotional cost he incurred:

Seraw also stressed the drawbacks of his sustained commitment to the family business:

Sustaining their commitment to family business also had a negative impact on their wealth-accumulating potential due to the national inheritance law, which grants equal inheritance rights to all children-including those who pursue independent ventures.

Declining entrepreneurial passion and indirect benefits: In contrast to children, extended family members pursued their attachment to the family business not only due to normative commitment but also to continuance commitment, resulting from the declining entrepreneurial passion of a prolonged commitment to the family business, combined with the indirect benefits the family business provided them with. For example, Yalew remained in the family business, confessing how he had lost his entrepreneurial passion after so many years in the family business, “now my age is 65; I don't want to start my own business because I can't withstand the hassle of running it”. But he used his position in the family business to generate additional income that he could not replicate outside it. He shared his experience as:

Similarly, Tadele purchased an apartment on credit for his nephew Tezazu and settled the loan monthly provided that Tezazu continue his commitment in the family business. He also gave employment opportunity to Tezazu's inexperienced wife in the family business. Leaving the family business would mean the termination of his wife's employment and interruption of his uncle's support for the loan on his apartment. He acknowledged the impact of these indirect benefits:

This study makes two primary theoretical contributions: it introduces venture pull as a novel mechanism of de-commitment in family firms, through which founders' attempts to repair declining commitment inadvertently enable entrepreneurial exit, and it contextualizes next-generation commitment within institutional voids and kinship obligations. Both contributions are grounded in two key insights, namely that commitment is an evolving process rather than a stable condition, and that children and extended family members follow structurally distinct trajectories shaped by different ownership expectations and kinship obligations. It is precisely these dynamics, operating within the Ethiopian institutional context, that give venture pull its distinctive character and that distinguish the commitment patterns observed here from those documented in Western family business research.

Our findings show that commitment is not a stable condition, but an evolving process shaped by family role and institutional context. A first key insight is that initial entry was not driven by affective commitment but by cultural obligation, guardianship norms, or lack of employment alternatives. Affective commitment developed later, through years of practical experience and growing responsibility. This challenges the implicit assumption in much of the commitment literature that joining reflects a pre-existing desire to be there (Schröder and Schmitt-Rodermund, 2013; Sharma and Irving, 2005) as our findings suggest that joining is not a reliable signal of affective commitment, and that the literature's tendency to treat entry as the starting point of an emotional bond may misread what is actually a normative or continuance-based entry into a process that only later, and not inevitably, produces affective attachment. Moreover, this finding extends prior commitment research, as much of the literature treats joining as evidence of affective commitment (Dawson et al., 2015; Sharma and Irving, 2005), whereas our findings suggest that entry is not a reliable signal of emotional identification. Founders who interpret presence as commitment may fail to take the deliberate steps needed to develop genuine affective attachment through capability development, recognition, and timely ownership inclusion.

A second key insight is that commitment trajectories differ systematically between children and extended family members. Once established, affective commitment was rarely stable for long, with ownership exclusion as its most consistent driver of erosion. Ownership exclusion affected both children and extended family members, but through different logics. Children experienced it as a denial of anticipated inheritance while extended family members perceived it as a structural condition for their engagement already from the outset. As participants grew more capable, the continued absence of ownership stakes left their ambitions unrewarded and their contributions unrecognized. Prior research shows that perceived fit between personal aspirations and the family firm is a key antecedent of affective commitment (Sharma and Irving, 2005), that shared values and relational trust sustain family harmony in family firms (Birgach and Habba, 2023), and that parental behavior shapes next-generation engagement (Garcia et al., 2019). Our findings extend this work by showing what happens when these conditions break down. When founders retain authority regardless of next-generation members' growing competence, exclude them from ownership, and deny them a voice in decisions, affective commitment erodes.

Excessive workload without recognition was a shared experience for both children and extended family members, and in both cases compounded the erosion of affective commitment already triggered by ownership exclusion. Moreover, lack of inheritance right in the family business for extended family members speeds up their de-commitment to the family business. Unlike studies that focus on how leadership style shapes succession success (Coffie et al., 2025) or commitment to succession specifically (Assenmacher et al., 2025), we examine commitment to the family business more broadly, encompassing children and extended family members who may never take over. This broader lens reveals that autonomy and freedom to pursue one's own ideas within the firm matter not only for succession outcomes but for sustained commitment more generally.

Marriage operated as a turning point for both children and extended family members, though its effects were more pronounced for children, whose founders additionally refused to allow daughters-in-law into the business. Such family conflicts can increase emotional costs and weaken identification, lowering affective commitment (Basly and Saunier, 2020; Rau, 2013). More broadly, our findings suggest that commitment should be understood as a trajectory rather than a state, developing through identifiable phases punctuated by trigger events such as joining, capability development, marriage, and exclusion from ownership. Children and extended family members follow structurally different paths through these phases because they face different triggers and different cost structures, and this branching-path logic offers a more dynamic account of next-generation commitment than prior models allow.

Sibling rivalry was specific to children. Extended family members who underperformed faced immediate dismissal rather than the tolerance extended to biological children, which meant rivalry among kin was structurally suppressed rather than openly expressed. Where Eze et al. (2021) found that monogamous family structures sustain harmony in Nigerian family businesses, our cases show the opposite. Siblings with the same mother experienced intense rivalry, driven by large family sizes, equal-treatment norms, and an inheritance law that guarantees all children equal shares regardless of contribution. As Dagoudo et al. (2024) found that unequal resource allocation in Beninese family businesses was experienced as oppression, high-performing children in our study similarly came to experience the family business as a constraint, intensifying the pull toward independent venturing. Participation in the family business had transmitted entrepreneurial values and capabilities to next-generation members (Tessema et al., 2025), and these, combined with the assets founders transferred to restore commitment, including business assets, new business units, and granting apartments, served instead as seed funding for independent ventures and enabled departure. This is the mechanism we call venture pull, which we develop further below.

Those who stayed did so not out of genuine identification but out of normative obligation, a felt duty not to disappoint the family (Dawson et al., 2015; Meyer and Parfyonova, 2010), or, for extended family members, because accumulated indirect benefits made leaving materially costly (Meyer and Allen, 1991). While Dawson et al. (2015) note that normative commitment is not necessarily experienced as negative, in our study children developed negative attitudes because the inheritance law granted equal rights to all siblings regardless of contribution, making sustained high effort feel unrewarding.

Our most novel contribution is venture pull, a theoretical construct that captures a specific and previously unidentified mechanism of de-commitment in family firms. Venture pull is defined as the process by which founders' deliberate attempts to sustain next-generation commitment inadvertently generate the resources, networks, and risk-buffering conditions that make independent venturing both viable and attractive, such that the actions taken to retain family members become the means by which those members are enabled to leave. This construct differs from adjacent concepts in important ways. Entrepreneurial exit is a broad category covering departures driven by external opportunity (DeTienne, 2010; Wennberg et al., 2010); venture pull is more specific, in that exit is enabled by the founder's own retention efforts rather than by outside pull. Spin-off creation refers to a firm intentionally establishing a new entity (Agarwal et al., 2004); in venture pull, the separation is unintended by the founding generation. Resource mobilization describes how entrepreneurs assemble inputs for a new venture (Brush et al., 2001) and is part of what happens within venture pull rather than a competing explanation. Succession avoidance describes next-generation members who are reluctant to take on leadership (Sharma et al., 2003); in our cases, participants actively sought greater responsibility and ownership but were denied it, and it was this exclusion, combined with family-transferred resources, that activated the pull toward independent venturing. By naming and defining venture pull, we offer a construct that can be applied in other settings where family firms combine high ownership concentration, limited formal employment alternatives, and strong kinship obligations. It is worth noting that the safety net, the guarantee that children could return to the family business if their independent venture failed, was exclusive to children and had no equivalent for extended family members.

Our second main contribution contextualizes these dynamics within the Ethiopian institutional and kinship system, showing that inheritance law, extended kinship obligations, and institutional voids produce commitment dynamics that are structurally different from those documented in Western contexts. First, Ethiopia's inheritance law guarantees equal rights to all biological children regardless of their contribution, creating a structural disincentive to sustained high effort with no parallel in most Western succession research. Second, the extended kinship system makes the family business a site of obligation for a wide network of kin. Extended family members entered, worked, and were supported through reciprocal obligation rather than employment, producing commitment dynamics that differed systematically from those of biological children. Khavul et al. (2009) and Smith (2009) report that African family business owners are responsible for supporting extended families financially, and our findings confirm that this norm strongly shapes normative and continuance commitments in extended family members who join the business. Third, limited formal employment, an underdeveloped financial system, and inconsistent regulation (Biru et al., 2021; Fanta, 2015) meant joining the family business was often the only realistic option, and family-transferred assets were unusually powerful as entrepreneurial seed capital. Owusu-Acheampong et al. (2024) show that cultural norms and informal human resource practices shape how family members engage with family businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa. While their focus is on succession, our findings extend this insight to commitment more broadly, showing that the same norms that drew next-generation members into the business early became the conditions that undermined their commitment later. Méndez et al. (2025) further show that family relational dynamics mediate family firm outcomes, and our study adds that these same dynamics shape whether next-generation members remain committed or leave. Together, these three contextual features mean that next-generation commitment dynamics in Ethiopia are not simply a variation on Western patterns but a structurally different phenomenon shaped by different legal, economic, and social conditions.

Taken together, these findings point to a striking irony in that founders who invest most heavily in retaining next-generation members are, through those very investments, creating the conditions that make leaving both viable and attractive. In the Ethiopian family firms we studied, commitment was built gradually through cultural obligation and economic necessity, developed into emotional attachment through years of engagement, and then eroded through the combined effect of ownership exclusion, excessive workload, marriage, and, for children, sibling rivalry under equal-inheritance conditions. Contrary to founders' intentions, the actions taken to repair commitment created the conditions for departure rather than engagement and loyalty. Those who remained did so out of obligation or material lock-in, not genuine identification, and at considerable personal cost. These findings suggest that the commitment literature's focus on how commitment is formed needs to be complemented by sustained attention to how it is lost, under what contextual conditions its loss becomes irreversible, and how founder behavior shapes that process in ways that are not always intended.

Our findings also offer practical implications. Founders who withhold ownership and decision-making authority while expecting full commitment are actively creating the conditions that make departure rational and possible. Early, incremental transfers of ownership and decision-making responsibility are likely to be more effective retention mechanisms than asset transfers made after affective commitment has already eroded. In contexts where inheritance law mandates equal distribution, founders may need to find other means, through lifetime ownership transfers, profit-sharing arrangements, or formal employment contracts, to make sustained commitment worthwhile. For advisors working with family businesses in similar institutional contexts, these findings highlight the importance of attending to inheritance structures and kinship obligations as active drivers of commitment rather than treating them as cultural background. For policymakers, the findings suggest that inheritance laws and the absence of formal employment alternatives have direct consequences for the continuity of family businesses and the entrepreneurial decisions of next-generation members, and that reform in these areas could have meaningful effects on family firm stability and intergenerational engagement as well as for the society at large.

Like all research, this study has limitations that may serve as avenues for further investigation. First, this study examines eight next-generation family members across three family businesses. These are medium and large tax-paying businesses and may fail to capture the dominant dynamics of smaller organizations, where resources are more strained and opportunities to develop affective commitment potentially less prominent. Future research could expand the scope by including family businesses that are small taxpayers. Second, our findings are fundamentally processual and, while we have attempted to capture temporal dynamics retrospectively, hindsight bias may have affected participants' recollections. Future studies would benefit from real-time longitudinal designs that allow commitment developments, changes, and decisions to join or leave the family business to be captured as they occur. Finally, our study highlights the importance of local institutions in shaping family business dynamics but is based on a relatively small number of cases within a single context. Future research drawing on larger samples across more family businesses would allow for greater variation and more robust theoretical claims about the conditions under which different commitment trajectories emerge. Ideally, such research would incorporate multiple contexts. In particular, comparative studies across different African institutional settings, especially countries with different inheritance laws and kinship structures, would help establish whether the commitment mechanisms identified here operate similarly beyond the Ethiopian context, or whether they are specific to the particular combination of institutional conditions present in Ethiopia. Future family business research, including in Western contexts, could also pay greater attention to the institutional environment more broadly, making explicit the rules, norms, and taken-for-granted assumptions that inform the phenomena under study.

This study set out to understand how next-generation commitment evolves in family firms operating under strong kinship obligations, cultural norms, and institutional conditions that differ substantially from those assumed in Western family business research. Our findings show that commitment is neither fixed nor uniform. It develops through obligation and practical engagement before becoming emotional attachment, erodes through a predictable set of mechanisms, and culminates in either sustained involvement or entrepreneurial exit through venture pull. The study makes two primary theoretical contributions. It introduces venture pull as a novel mechanism of de-commitment, showing that founders' attempts to repair declining commitment inadvertently create the conditions that enable next-generation members to leave. And it demonstrates that the commitment dynamics observed here are not simply a contextual variation on Western patterns but a structurally distinct phenomenon shaped by inheritance law, extended kinship obligations, and institutional voids. Together, these contributions suggest that the commitment literature needs to move beyond Western assumptions about career choice, ownership expectations, and family structure, and to develop more context-sensitive accounts of how commitment forms, evolves, and breaks down across different institutional settings.