Forming a Business Partnership: Psychoanalytic Aspects

Business psychoanalysis

Abstract

Most Russian entrepreneurs conduct business in partnership. This is understandable, because from an economic point of view there are many advantages: increased opportunities to attract resources, joint efforts to achieve business goals, distribution of risks.
In addition to purely business aspects, the system of business partnerships contains complex psychological and emotional mechanisms that influence their psychodynamics. These mechanisms influence decision making, leadership effectiveness, and the quality of relationships. Many business partnerships face conflicts and fall apart.

The pandemic period gave rise to therapy for couples of business partners in Silicon Valley. In Russia, there has also been an increased demand for improved interaction in business partnerships. In response to this request, the Skolkovo School of Management launched the Tandemocracy program; and lawyers are developing the format of partnership sessions, where business partners agree on formal and informal terms for doing business together.

We hypothesized that the formation and dynamics of business partnerships are influenced by partners' unconscious fantasies and decided to test this hypothesis through a series of exploratory coaching sessions.
Unfortunately, there is practically no psychoanalytic literature devoted to business partnerships. Therefore, the approach we chose to conduct the study was based on psychoanalytic theories and techniques used in family therapy.

These techniques were synthesized into a framework, which we tested on 13 pairs of business partners and made a psychoanalytic interpretation. Based on the results, an approach was formed, on the basis of which a new method for working with entrepreneurial couples can be developed in the future.