Researchers recently pointed to family science as one avenue for better understanding business families. We submit, however, that leveraging family science will require building on what researchers ...have already learned, often without the benefit of family science theories. Thus, we review progress from studies that investigate links between business family attributes and family firms and integrate our review with descriptions of family science theories that pertain to each attribute. By pairing what is known about different business family attributes with the appropriate family science theories, our hope is to accelerate efforts to understand the myriad ways business families shape family businesses.
Family business scholars assume that family business goals represent the nature of the firm's decision making and are driving forces (i.e., antecedents) of family firm behavior, performance, ...continuity, competitiveness, and sustainability. Without measuring family business goals, family business research—specifically, the family business theorizing process—is floating in the midst of assumptions used to justify observational descriptive data, such as differences between family and non-family firms and differences among various types of family firms. There remains a lack of clarity surrounding the theoretical definition of family business goals and an absence of methodological approaches to make the concept operative. In order to address this gap, this research applies an exploratory step-by-step methodology that combines both a theoretical and an empirical approach. First, following an inductive literature review, I theorize family business goals as a multidimensional concept combining two scales: economic versus non-economic orientation and family versus business orientation. Second, by using a unique Spanish database of family business, I use the partial least squares structural equation modeling method to confirm and extend the proposed theoretical multidimensional concept of family business goals."
Dominant family control reduces Type I agency conflicts because of monitoring efficiencies, while increasing Type II agency conflicts because of the family’s voting power. Additionally, Type II ...agency conflicts could be exacerbated if the family agents managed the firm solely for the family’s benefit. The two different types of agency conflicts were examined in a sample of 499 public Indian family businesses during the years 2006 to 2015. Family-controlled and non-family-managed firms appeared to be optimally configured to minimize both types of agency conflicts. The absence of management control appeared to alleviate some of the dissipative agency conflict effects of dominant family ownership.
Research Summary: Research on the internationalization of family firms has flourished in recent years, yet the mechanisms through which family involvement shapes the determinants, processes, and ...outcomes of internationalization remain little understood and largely undertheorized. We contribute to research at the intersection of international business and family business by examining the roles of different sources of family firm heterogeneity and the context in shaping the determinants, processes, and outcomes of business internationalization. Drawing on this analysis, we summarize the articles published in this special issue and set out an agenda for further research aimed at advancing a more fine‐grained and contextualized understanding of internationalization in family firms.
Entrepreneurship declines precipitously across generations in family firms, except in families that convey an entrepreneurial legacy to successors. However, because an entrepreneurial legacy is ...imprinted on all children, its impact should extend beyond successors. Inductive analysis of data from 26 nonsuccessor adult children from 13 multigenerational German wineries reveals that whether and where-at the firm, within the family's portfolio of firms, or elsewhere-such adult children pursue entrepreneurship depends, in addition to having an entrepreneurial legacy, on family cohesiveness and flexibility. Implications are that whereas entrepreneurial legacies affect all children, whether and where children leverage their legacy depends on the business family behind the family firm.
The concept of generations has become increasingly important in the social science fields to explain diverse phenomena affecting organizations. This is especially true in the family business field ...where generations are considered a constitutive element. Nevertheless, there is still a limited understanding of generations and the implications of their involvement in family business. We review prior studies on generations by considering different social science fields, which we analyze according to a novel theoretical framework. Building on this framework, and placing particular emphasis on family firms, we identify important knowledge gaps that serve as a springboard for future research.
Governance Mechanisms and Family Firms Chrisman, James J.; Chua, Jess H.; Le Breton-Miller, Isabelle ...
Entrepreneurship theory and practice,
03/2018, Letnik:
42, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Governance, along with goals and resources, is a key determinant of the distinctiveness and heterogeneity of family firms. Our introduction discusses formal and informal governance mechanisms that ...emanate from inside and outside the firm and then reviews, integrates, and extends the contributions to this topic of the six articles and four commentaries in this special issue. Building and reflecting on these contributions, we suggest that although formal governance mechanisms inside family firms have unique characteristics, informal governance mechanisms may be equally important, and external mechanisms, both formal and informal, can also profoundly influence the behavior and performance of family firms.
In this paper, we investigate two research queries pertaining to the success of small family business succession. First, we examine how the Big-5 personality traits of descendant entrepreneurs ...influence the success of their family business succession. Second, we investigate whether descendant entrepreneurs whose personality traits are congruent with the values of their family business, would lead to the success of their family business succession, through the mediating role of descendant entrepreneur-family business value congruence (DE-FBVC).
We rely on the person-organization fit theory for our conceptual framework and we collected primary data from 124 respondents designated as chairman and managing directors in small family businesses.
Our results show that a descendant entrepreneur's openness, extroversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness traits are likely to lead to successful family business succession, but a descendant entrepreneur with neuroticism trait is unlikely to do so. In addition, our results reveal that the DE-FBVC mediates the relationship between openness and extroversion traits with succession success positively, but between neuroticism trait and succession success negatively. By contrast, we find that DE-FBVC does not mediate the relationship between conscientiousness and agreeableness traits with succession success.
The findings of our study suggest that while four of the Big-5 personality traits matter for the success of small family business succession, specific personality traits of descendant entrepreneurs which are found to be congruent with the values of their family business, will also lead to succession success.
Family firm heterogeneity results in reduced predictability of firm behavior as well as inconsistent results regarding research on family firm behavior. We argue that family firm heterogeneity is ...based, among other factors, on values heterogeneity. In order to lay the ground for future research, we develop a taxonomy of family firms based on values. Using values theory, we identify six value categories, resulting in five family firm types with five distinct value profiles. Second, we posit family firm values profiles are distinct to the group of family firms as nonfamily firms do not display similar value profiles.
New ventures often require debt financing but face difficulties convincing lenders of their creditworthiness because of agency problems. Researchers have shown that social capital can help small ...firms reduce lenders' agency concerns but new ventures do not yet have their own social capital. We propose that family involvement increases a venture's ability to borrow family social capital for the purpose of obtaining debt financing. Empirical tests with 1267 new ventures suggest that family involvement directly and indirectly improves a new venture's access to debt financing.
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