Journal of Family Business Strategy最新文献

This study investigates the relationship between board social activity (i.e., frequency of board meetings) and firm performance in publicly traded family and non-family firms, focusing on the moderating effects of family involvement (i.e., family ownership and at least one family member on the board of directors). Our investigation is based on a database of 172 family and non-family firms listed on the Italian Stock Exchange over a 10-year period (1098 observations). The results indicate a curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) relationship between board meeting frequency and firm accounting performance. Moreover, family involvement positively moderates this curvilinear relationship, leading to an optimal level of board meetings, which is higher in firms with increasing family involvement than in other firms. Applying behavioral governance theory, we contribute to explain how boards of directors influence firm performance through the board context (i.e., family involvement) and arrangements (i.e., frequency of board meetings/social interactions), providing evidence for family firm heterogeneity.

We suggest how research into family firms can be advanced via an approach of contradiction and disaggregation – two complementary processes. The former questions, generally via direct contradiction, popular theories and normative postures. The latter employs methods to disaggregate samples, causal relations, and constructs to detect or reconcile contradictory findings and avoid excessive generalization. Disaggregation also can identify specific, neglected types of organizations, actors, and contexts that evoke challenges to prevailing perspectives.

An increasing number of studies emphasize the importance of trust between family businesses and their stakeholders. Surprisingly, family business research still lacks a comprehensive understanding of the role of trust in stakeholder relationships; whereas another field—that of organizational behavior—has examined trust-building in depth. Thus, in order to identify specific research gaps and to determine future research directions, we systematically review the literature on trust in the field of family business, as well as in organizational behavior research. Both streams pursue different, hence complementary, approaches in terms of the type of trusting stakeholders, theory building, nomological network (antecedents, components and consequences of trust), level of analysis and type of trust. Whilst family business research maintains a focus on the consequences of trust, organizational behavior focuses rather on its components. We formulate a set of propositions and future research questions as to how insights from organizational behavior research can help to fill existing research gaps and advance our understanding of trust in the management of family business stakeholder relationships.

Based primarily on the Resource-Based View and prior evidence, this study gauges the potential differences in innovative behaviour between international family firms and non-family firms when conditions change drastically in the business environment (i.e. from a situation of economic growth to one of downturn, and then to recovery). The research setting is a large sample of Spanish manufacturing firms between 2007 and 2016 (i.e. pre-Covid-19). During this period (2009–2013), the global economic and financial crisis affected Spain. Thus, three sub-periods are distinguished in the empirical analysis: growth, crisis, and recovery. Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, our findings show that the paths of innovation activities that promote internationalisation via exporting in family and non-family firms are somewhat dissimilar in each sub-period, supporting the argument that the causal effect of innovation on internationalisation is heavily dependent on environmental conditions. Compared to non-family firms, our results show that when family firms internationalise, they follow a wide variety and more stable number of paths in innovation activities. Our findings also provide additional evidence to support the argument of heterogeneity among family firms.

Family firms often struggle to recruit skilled non-family employees. Applying a mixed-method strategy, this article investigates the changing perception of family firms as attractive employers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Experimental results indicate that family firms benefit from a greater popularity amid crises owing to perceptions that they offer greater job security and compensation. Qualitative findings expand on these results by identifying new attractiveness-relevant factors that only come into play amid crises—specifically, multifaceted conceptions of family firms’ crisis responses and their importance for local communities and economies contribute to their situational appeal.

The Covid-19 pandemic as a truly global crisis has shown the importance of firm resilience in times of crisis. Yet, so far, we lack an understanding of the role of firm ownership and management in building this resilience. Based on stewardship theory, we posit that family management and ownership help firms to navigate through a global crisis. To test our predictions, we analyze how Covid-related negative events affect the stock market reactions of 300 German listed firms and how family ownership and management moderate these effects. Our cross-sectional regression results show a positive effect of family management while no such effect was found for family ownership. We contribute to the research on family involvement and stewardship in crisis situations by showing that family ownership and management constitute distinct determinants of stewardship behavior and by bringing a context element into family business stewardship research that was missing so far in the literature. Practical implications exist for family firm’s top management employment policies and capital market communication in crisis situations.

The purpose of this study is to explore how family firms respond to wild cards. We aim to capture the understanding of family firm owners/managers of what wild cards are in terms of frequency, kind, and impact. We also examine how familiness and entrepreneurial orientation form the resilience and survival of family firms when facing wild cards. The scope of our attention is limited to extreme events so far overlooked in the family firm resilience literature, and the empirical context of our study involves the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings show that the response to wild cards depends on the understanding of those extreme situations that family firms managers/owners develop. Deep time horizon is relevant in developing a useful understanding of wild cards, and generational involvement helps to socially construct it. After developing an understanding, family firm managers/owners use decision making preferences in selecting their response to wild cards. Our study offers a behavioral take on family firms resilience, and provides a fine grained view incorporating behavioral constructs.

We replicate, in the Chinese context, a study undertaken in 2007 by Miller, Le Breton-Miller, Lester, and Cannella (MLLC), which examined the performance differences among lone-founder firms, family firms, and nonfamily firms in the U.S. Our goal was to test the generalizability of MLLC’s findings, as well as uncover contextual nuances that might exist in a markedly different institutional context that also includes state-owned enterprises. Our results corroborate MLLC’s finding that lone-founder firms outperform other types of firms. We also find that when family ownership is at lower levels, family firms and nonfamily firms seem to have similar performance; however, family firms have a performance advantage at higher levels of family ownership. Finally, we find that state-owned enterprises are outperformed by lone-founder, family and nonfamily firms. Our study highlights the importance of distinguishing among different types of nonfamily firms, between family and lone-founder firms, and among family firms with different levels of family ownership. We discuss the implications of our findings and offer suggestions for future research in family business.

This study takes a fresh look at the credibility of corporate communication in family firms, as compared to corporate communication in non-family firms, in voluntary sustainability reporting. In his pioneering work Hsueh (2018) discovered that family firms suffer from a credibility disadvantage in terms of their sustainability reporting efforts, from the point of view of external stakeholders. This is called the ‘credibility gap’. This finding however is in stark contrast to the superior trust attribution of external stakeholders towards family firms in the general family firm literature. Our replication study shows that indeed, family firms do not suffer from a credibility gap compared to their non-family firm counterparts. In fact, in our experimental extension we can show that family firms, when perceived as such, are considered to be benevolent, which in turn increases the credibility of their sustainability reporting from an external perspective. Thus, contrary to the original study by Hsueh (2018), we suggest that family firms have a credibility advantage over non-family firms when it comes to their sustainability reporting. Furthermore, our results suggest that this credibility advantage remains, even when tested with specific stakeholder roles (customers, job-seekers), and that it ultimately influences their interactions with the firm positively.

Our goal is to foster the development of a healthy replication culture in family business research. Replication, which advances theory by confronting existing understanding with new evidence, is of paramount importance in creating a meaningful cumulative knowledge base. In the family business field, however, as in many other fields within the broader management literature, dedicated replications are largely absent. After a brief analysis of the likely causes and consequences of our collective avoidance of replication studies, we examine four types of replication of particular importance to the field and provide guidelines and recommendations for family business scholars interested in conducting such research. We invite journals and their editors to reflect on the role they can play in changing the incentive structures to conduct and submit useful replication studies and provide actionable suggestions for improvement. We illustrate contemporary examples of family business knowledge advancement through replication research.