Abstract: Copreneurship is jointly led by the couple, but how they share leadership under dual identities has not been widely explored in the academic community. Based on the perspective of copreneurial identity, this study selects a copreneurial firm as the research object and adopts the exploratory case study method to construct a theoretical model for copreneurial co-leadership behavior. This study finds that: (1) Copreneurial identity promotes the formation of organizational synergy when the spouse leads together. In other words, role identity ensures the balance of power structure of copreneurial co-leadership, while the spouse identity forms the emotional connection between the co-leaders. (2) Copreneurial identity plays an important role in the process of joint decision-making, integrating resources and coordinating actions by couples, which further promotes the identification and utilization of opportunities for new ventures. This study shows that the copreneurial identity not only maintains the structural characteristics of copreneurial co-leadership, but also provides a situational basis for promoting the growth of new ventures.

Key words: copreneurship, role identity, spouse identity, co-leadership