‘Who am I?’ Self-identity conflict and franchisor exit

Franchising is a popular business growth strategy, yet many franchisors choose to exit early. This exploratory study seeks to understand why this is the case, while also responding to the call for a more individual focus in franchise research. We analyze the narrative accounts of 53 franchisors—surviving, exited and nascent—all of whom transitioned to franchising in the previous 10 years. We find all these individuals experienced a tension between their original business-owner occupational self-concept and their self-identity as a franchisor. Those still operating as franchisors after five years were able to resolve this conflict by crafting a viable hybrid identity for themselves. Those who chose to exit franchising in earlier years were unable to do this, experiencing an unresolved misfit between a self-identity shaped by their previous entrepreneurial role and the franchisor identity. Similar tensions are revealed within the group of nascent franchisors in the initial stages of this transition. These findings and the conceptual model that emerged from them extend the sparse literature on franchisor experience by revealing a relationship between franchisor startup experience, self-identity and franchise continuity that has important implications, both theoretical and practical.