Journal of Family Business Strategy最新文献

Over the past decades the field of family business has witnessed a surge in publications and experienced meaningful changes that have served to increase its legitimacy and establish the field as an independent area of academic inquiry. Along with these advancements, scholars have called for experimental research designs that can reveal the influence of individual-level, microfoundational phenomena underlying macro-level family business phenomena. Given the challenge of conducting such studies, the event-sampling method with experimental design (ESME) approach is highlighted as a new opportunity for family business scholars to further enrich their methodological toolbox. Fundamentally, the ESME approach is a longitudinal, repeated-sampling method with experimental design that provides researchers with the opportunity to investigate the effects of various micro-level phenomena within the family business. By facilitating the incorporation of familial variables and processual elements in family business research, the ESME approach can account for the longitudinal and dynamic interplay of family and family business phenomena. Overall, ESME is a method with the potential to help researchers answer many of the “how” questions that remain unanswered in the field of family business. A description of ESME is offered, relevant challenges and opportunities in family business research are identified, and best practices for ESME are shared to support the work of family business scholars.

Despite clear evidence that emotions, both individual- and group-level, matter in shaping family business processes and outcomes, there is a dearth of research on the importance of shared leadership of emotions, especially in the context of family business. Consequently, we seek to expand shared leadership theory to incorporate various aspects of emotions in the family business milieu. We introduce a generalized process model of shared leadership in family firms, then provide a brief overview of emotions. Next, operating within the larger theoretical domain of group emotion, we introduce and work toward developing a theory of shared emotional leadership in and of family business, including representative antecedents and outcomes. We subsequently lay out a research agenda to stimulate future theoretical and empirical work in the general ken.

Extant literature suggests that family firms, due to their desire to retain family control, have a lower propensity to diversify than non-family firms. Contrarily, family business groups (FBGs), especially Asian FBGs, are widely diversified. It was anticipated that FBGs would become more focused during reforms in developing economies. However, these FBGs did not only maintain their diversified portfolio of businesses but also enter newly deregulated sectors during reforms. This paper draws insights from transaction cost theory and knowledge governance literature to investigate this paradox. This paper argues that the family-based governance mechanisms of FBGs can efficiently manage their diversified portfolio by avoiding the “negatives” associated with market-based exchanges and creating “positives” by efficient knowledge sharing among affiliates. Thus, diversification strategies allowed Indian FBGs to create value and preserve the socioemotional and psychic wealth that comes from owning various businesses.

This study challenges the current and dominant notion that psychological ownership is static by exploring its dynamic nature. It addresses how individual family business owners express their psychological ownership and how psychological ownership is impacted over time. Based on a longitudinal and qualitative study during a real-time exit, we conclude that family business owners assign meanings to their psychological ownership that are individual, multifold, enduring and volatile. Furthermore, we conclude that the dynamics of psychological ownership imply that it varies in meanings, among individuals, and in presence and duration of meanings. We also conclude that it is influenced by contextual circumstances, and that it is possible to liberate oneself cognitively and emotionally from psychological ownership.

A single family office (SFO) is an organizational entity owned by a single family and primarily dedicated to managing assets and meeting the needs of family members. While a rising number of SFOs around the world emphasize the importance of this specific vehicle for entrepreneurial families, scholarly knowledge on SFOs is surprisingly scarce. To better understand this phenomenon, we conducted and analyzed exploratory interviews with 109 German-speaking SFO-owning families. We answer a call for research on SFO heterogeneity by identifying two relevant, separate dimensions: a) whether the family still owns the original family firm and b) whether the family generation who founded the SFO still owns the SFO. Based on our qualitative insights and theoretical approaches such as socioemotional wealth (SEW) and agency theory, we develop propositions about how the respective heterogeneity of SFOs affects the family-related goals, entrepreneurial investment behaviors, and governance of SFOs.

Understanding family firms’ debt maturity structure is important because it plays a key role in making strategic decisions and mitigating agency conflicts. This study investigates the relationship between family involvement in governance and debt maturity structure in family firms by drawing on governance literature and insights from the socioemotional wealth perspective. Based on a sample of non-financial Italian public family firms, comprising 383 firm-year observations, we find differences in the proportion of long-term debt depending on variations in components of family involvement in governance. In particular, later-generation involvement on the board is associated with a lower proportion of long-term debt. Furthermore, family ownership positively moderates this relationship such that the proportion of long-term debt is higher with high family ownership. This study contributes to literature by adding further nuance to our understanding of the heterogeneity of family firms, by considering the relationship between variations in family involvement in governance and debt structure. Our study has practical implications that may inform investors about factors related to family involvement in governance, which are likely to influence debt maturity structure, and thus long-term strategies of family firms.

We study whether differences in shareholder protection by countries are important in explaining lower corporate social performance (CSP) of family firms vis-à-vis non-family firms. We create a dataset covering 46 countries for the period 2002–2016. Using a novel approach, we show that the difference in CSP of family firms relative to similar non-family firms is smaller when family firms experience stronger minority shareholder protection to reduce conflicts of interest than non-family firms do. Moreover, we find that the difference in CSP of family firms relative to similar non-family firms is larger when family firms experience stronger shareholders’ rights in corporate governance than non-family firms do. Our results support the view that differences in country-level shareholder protection play an important role in explaining the differences in CSP between family and non-family firms.

We study conflicting arguments and empirical findings of the socioemotional wealth (SEW)-family firm performance relationship using meta-analysis. We add to the debate by questioning: First, how do major managerial decisions (strategic choices, corporate governance, and non-family stakeholder orientation) play a mediating role in the SEW performance link? Second, how do specific five SEW dimensions act as moderating variables in the SEW-performance link? We show a positive relationship between SEW and performance. Hence there is no evidence that the pursuit of family SEW occurs at the expense of financial utility. Furthermore, we find that major managerial decisions mediate the SEW-performance relation.

Several firms around the world are led by multiple CEOs. Our study investigates how co-CEOs affect corporate investment under different conditions of ownership and governance. We argue that while family firms may invest more parsimoniously than non-family firms, the presence of multiple family CEOs raises overinvestment due to a potential divergence of personal agendas. Our analysis confirms that co-CEOs are conducive of excessive investment activities in family firms. This effect is lower when the family firm is subject to strong board monitoring, and higher when the co-CEOs belong to different family branches. Contrary to the view that families represent homogeneous groups with aligned interests and preferences, our study suggests that the fragmentation of leadership among multiple actors may be costly for the family business.

This article addresses the business family, which so far has received only limited scholarly attention. The business family as the group of family members regularly discussing and deciding business matters is key for the functioning of both the business and the family. Specifically, we propose and empirically test the concept of the enterpriseness of business families, which is the ability to handle the potentially contradictory expectations of the family and business systems. We empirically validate the enterpriseness scale using a sample of 451 business families. Results indicate high levels of validity and reliability. The two subscales decision-making ability (six items) and business family identity (four items) offer a methodically rigorous, theoretically sound, and parsimonious measure. The article presents opportunities for potential applications of the enterpriseness concept and scale for family business as well as business family research and practice.