Family influence, gender and entrepreneurial passion in Saudi family businesses

Purpose This study examines how family influence shapes the entrepreneurial passion of next-generation family members in Saudi Arabian family businesses, and asks how gender conditions this relationship. Design/methodology/approach Adopting a qualitative, multiple-case study design, the authors conducted 17 semi-structured interviews with family members across ten Saudi healthcare-sector family firms. Data were analyzed in two phases: a deductive phase that coded transcripts against the Family Power–Experience–Culture (F-PEC) framework and the dualistic model of passion, followed by an inductive phase that identified emergent themes through constant comparison. Findings Centralized family power and emotionally over-identified family cultures were associated with obsessive passion, whereas decentralized governance and shared-value cultures were associated with harmonious passion. Gender emerged as a cross-cutting, conditioning influence: female participants more often described their passion as entangled with proving legitimacy and absorbing uneven workloads, particularly under centralized governance. Family experience did not emerge as a salient driver of passion, appearing instead as a taken-for-granted feature of multigenerational firms. Research limitations/implications Findings are drawn from a single industry and cultural setting and are not statistically generalizable; they offer analytic generalization to similarly collectivist, multigenerational family business contexts. Practical implications Family governance design, succession planning and gender-inclusive mentorship can be calibrated to cultivate harmonious rather than obsessive passion among next-generation family members. Originality/value This study extends the F-PEC framework beyond its quantitative origins, integrates it with the dualistic model of passion and surfaces gender as a conditioning, intersecting influence largely absent from prior F-PEC-based research – a data-generated hypothesis warranting further investigation, contributing context-specific insight from an underrepresented Gulf setting.