Journal of Family Business Strategy最新文献

In this research note, we examine Finnboat, a traditional Finnish family firm, from the interrelated perspectives of crisis behavior and innovation. The firm under study has endured three major crises: the economic recession of the 1990s, the 2008–2009 financial crisis, and the coronavirus pandemic. Our study shows that Finnboat has undertaken only very modest, if any, innovations during stable periods but has conducted a series of radical business-model and technology innovations, triggered by the different crises. This finding implies that during crises, a risk-averse family firm can productively engage into risk-taking and innovative behavior, effectively engaging in a “preference reversal.” We also find evidence of a deliberate accumulation of slack resources during periods of calm, which are mobilized to back up innovation and renewal efforts when a crisis hits. Our findings highlight family firms’ potential to endure crises by adopting a temporal separation logic to the risk-aversion vs. risk-taking paradox, and relatedly, by strategically managing the resource portfolio. Based on the case study, we suggest several research directions, approaches, and methodologies for studying family firm behavior and change during and in-between crises.

The study of Say-on-Pay (SOP) – a shareholder vote on executive compensation – is a key topic in the corporate governance field, despite which its influence in the context of family firms has not been studied until now. In response to this need, this paper pursues a twofold objective: first, to analyze differences in shareholder voting behavior between family and non-family firms; second, to explore the impact of increasing family ownership on voting dispersion among family firms, testing the related moderating effects of family involvement in management and governance on this relationship. Focusing on a sample of large UK listed companies from 2007–2017, our results show that the distinctive features of family firms lead to more concentrated voting positions regarding pay packages compared to non-family firms, with this voting concentration tending to be higher as family ownership increases. Moreover, while this relationship intensifies when the family is involved in management, we find partial support in the case of family involvement in governance.

The transition from private to public ownership through the process of going public (i.e. initial public offering, or IPO) has attracted scholarly attention because of the governance, strategic and financial challenges and changes that firms face to achieve favourable valuations from equity markets. This is especially true for family companies, resulting in growing interest in the subject from family business scholars. This study systematically reviews existing research on IPOs in family businesses and assesses the state of the art in this field. It examines scholarly articles published in academic peer-reviewed journals from 1995 to 2020 and identifies research streams on the topic. It then systematizes the existing knowledge on IPOs in family firms through an input–process–output model that conceptually overlaps with IPO phases. This organizes the papers under investigation across four levels of analysis (firm, family, individual, and contextual levels). The article contributes to both research and practice by providing a useful theoretical driven model to guide future research efforts on IPOs in family businesses and suggesting specific policy interventions to support the listing process of family firms.

Building on recent advances in the socioemotional wealth (SEW) literature and the concept of bifurcation bias, we explore the first turnaround response of family firms to a decline in financial performance. We argue that heterogeneity among family firms in terms of their levels of family ownership and family involvement in management alters their response to an economic crisis situation. We also contend that severity of a crisis situation significantly moderates the relationships. Our multi-level analysis of a sample of crisis situations pertaining to family firms supports our hypotheses.

Vulnerability is a defining and fundamental but under-researched, quality of many family firms. We define family vulnerability (FV) as the degree to which family owners and executives realistically perceive that they and their firms are susceptible to material and socioemotional losses from their ventures. Building on social exchange theory, we offer a model that specifies conditions by which FV allows family firm owner-managers to establish mutually beneficial and enduring relationships with prospective resource providers. These relationships improve strategic options for such parties who gain support when they most need it and are more committed and loyal to those who provide it, thereby engendering goodwill and social capital.

Surviving a constantly changing environment is one of the challenges for the longevity of family firms. We assume that navigating through disruptive environments is inextricably linked to strategy and/or identity adaptation, modification and change. From a strategy-identity nexus point of view, these changes bear the risk of discontinuous shifts in strategy and identity. In this paper, we offer three types of strategy-identity inconsistencies and assume an alignment in strategy and identity as key for business survival. To uncover how family businesses bring order into their strategy and identity orientations, we draw upon the literature on the use of organizational history. We conducted a qualitative in-depth and longitudinal case study of a 100-year old German family business, which managed to survive major changes in the clothing industry. By exploring distinctive strategy-identity inconsistencies, we found three modes of the use of history (‘adjusting history’, ‘inventing history and historical forgetting’ and ‘invoking history’) whereby the family business drew upon historical accounts to ensure that identity was continuously enacted and expressed via strategy, and inferred, modified and affirmed from strategy. Our insights have significant implications not only for understanding the strategy-identity nexus in family businesses but also for research on the use of history.

While principal–principal problems are prevalent in emerging economies, the severity of these problems could vary based on the identity of shareholders and the institutional context. This study theoretically and empirically analyzes the effect of state and family blockholders as well as their possible interaction on financial firm performance in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Using a dataset of 389 non-financial firms and 2607 observations (2009–2015), we found that ownership held by the state as the largest shareholder has a negative effect on firm performance, whereas this negative effect disappears when the state owns between 15 % and 50 % of shares and coexists with local families as other large shareholders. Our findings contribute to the nexus between the family business and corporate governance literature by studying principal–principal agency problems and the impact of owner combinations on firm performance in emerging economies in the GCC region.

Drawing on agency and stewardship theories, we examine how two dimensions of family governance influence family firm innovation strategy. Specifically, we differentiate between the effects of Family Management (family CEO, family managerial involvement, and next-generation involvement in the business) and Family Guardianship (trustees and family council) and study their effects on explorative and exploitative modes of innovation strategy. Our analysis of unique survey data from 328 UK private family firms shows that specific dimensions of Family Management (next-generation involvement) and Family Guardianship (the existence of a family council) are significantly positively associated with exploration. Exploitation, however, is positively associated with next-generation involvement only. These findings answer calls to theorize and empirically examine the heterogeneity of family firms’ innovation modes. These findings further respond to calls to better understand the relationship between governance and behavior, advancing scholarly debate at the intersection of agency and stewardship, family governance, and innovation.