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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.
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Drawing on Lemon and Verhoef's customer journey, this study examines the context of local family businesses to investigate product scarcity's role as a mediator between information overload and competitive arousal in affecting consumers' behavioural intentions during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected regarding purchases in three famous local family businesses operating in the Food and Beverage sector in the North of Italy. Results reveal that during a sanitary emergency, the consumer in family firms are less inclined to react impulsively than those in large distribution, except when they perceive product scarcity, which increases their level of competitiveness towards the market and other consumers. This behaviour towards other businesses is due to the family business efficacy, which pushes family firms in reinventing themselves and takes care of their trusted consumers. The paper ends by highlighting the main theoretical and managerial contributions, delineating new paths of analysis.
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Purpose: This study investigates the behaviour of family firms, family management and family ownership regarding their socioemotional wealth (Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)) during the COVID-19 pandemic and according to their slack resources availability. Design/methodology/approach: This study employs a multiple regression analysis to analyse 245 firm-year observations from 2020 to 2021. Findings: Family firms have a negative effect on CSR, as do family management and family ownership. Slack resources (both absorbed and unabsorbed) reduce the negative effect of family firms (and family ownership) on CSR. Unabsorbed slack resources reduce the negative effect of family management on CSR and absorbed slack resources increase the negative effect of family management on CSR. The results are robust with various measurements of slack resources. Extra analyses reveal that family commissioner has no effect on CSR. Originality/value: To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first empirical study to analyse the impact of COVID-19 on the preservation of socioemotional wealth in family firms. This study proves the theoretical argument of prior studies that the preservation of socioemotional wealth in family firms during the COVID-19 pandemic depends on their financial condition. The study also proves that there are different attitudes among family ownership, family management and family firms concerning the use of slack resources for socioemotional wealth preservation that have not been analysed by previous research. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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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 COVID19 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.
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The purpose of this study is to explore how family firms respond to wild cards. We aim to capture the under-standing 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 man-agers/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.
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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.
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Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine factors contributing to family firms' survival in the ongoing COVID-19 crisis;in this endeavour, the study espouses the underpinnings of social exchange theory and entrepreneurial resilience. Design/methodology/approach: The views of 128 Italian family micro and small-sized firm owners/managers operating in different industries were gathered through an online questionnaire. Findings: The analysis uncovers 12 fundamental factors contributing to firms' survival;these are encapsulated in three dimensions and presented in two theoretical frameworks. The "beneficiary” dimension stresses the support from various internal and external stakeholders, while the "benefactor” dimension illustrates the commitment to extend the family tradition and be responsive to stakeholders. Finally, the "immersion/embeddedness” dimension denotes firms' entrepreneurial behaviour, agility, decision-making and drive. Originality/value: Firstly, and from a practitioner perspective, this study addresses recognised knowledge and research gaps in contemporary family business research, including how family firms are confronting the current unprecedented crisis. This response to current extant gaps provides first-hand empirical findings that could be primarily considered by industry stakeholders. Secondly, and from a theoretical angle, the aforementioned dimensions revealed through the analysis, coupled with the development of a theoretical framework, contribute to conceptual rigour and, therefore, a deeper understanding of family firms' journey through an unprecedented event. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on corporate financial performance using a unique, cross-country, and longitudinal sample of 3350 listed firms worldwide. We find that the financial performance of family firms has been significantly higher than that of nonfamily firms during the COVID-19 pandemic, accounting for pre-pandemic business conditions. This effect is pertinent to firms with strong family involvement in management or in both management and ownership. We also identify the role of firm-, industry-, and country-level contingencies for family business financial performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study offers a novel understanding of the financial resilience across different types of family business and sets an agenda for future research on the drivers of resilience of family firms to adverse events. It also provides important and novel evidence for policymakers, particularly for firms with different ownership and management structures. © 2023, The Author(s).
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PurposeIn many countries, small and medium-sizes enterprises (SMEs) are primarily responsible for wealth, economic growth, innovation and research and development. In this paper, the authors examine the impact of family ownership and owner involvement on the financial performance of unlisted Finnish SMEs.Design/methodology/approachThis is an empirical paper using a random sample of 1,137 non-listed Finnish SMEs. Through regression analyses and robustness tests, the authors examine the effects of family management, family and employee ownership and involvement.FindingsUsing profitability measures, the authors find family-owned and controlled SMEs perform significantly better than non-family firms. The number of family members actively involved in daily business operations bears a significant negative relation to firm performance. In contrast, non-family firms in which owners are actively involved, provide comparable returns to family firms, suggesting that in non-family firms active involvement contributes to performance. The authors find that employee ownership in SMEs does not provide an efficient way to compensate employees since more dispersed ownership does not lead to higher performance.Research limitations/implicationsSME employee ownership does not provide an efficient way to compensate employees since more dispersed ownership does not lead to higher performance.Practical implicationsIn the case of Finland, family ownership is an effective organisational structure. As the depth of the COVID pandemic remains uncertain, firms with committed ownership are key to the economic recovery.Originality/valueThe authors approach the family ownership and involvement issue from a different angle. Unlike earlier studies, the authors examine the impact of both family ownership and involvement on the financial performance of privately owned SMEs. This paper helps shed light on the role of family ownership and involvement as a possible explanatory factor of overall economic performance.
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This study focuses on business incubators in Spain, which helps compare regions within Spain. This study has four goals: to shape taxonomy of the Spanish business incubator system, to compare between regions, to identify the factors affecting incubators' success, and to analyse during the COVID pandemic. Of the 478 business incubators registered in Spain, 89 were selected as the sample for study. Business incubators provide office space, equipment and mentoring services, as well as financial, legal and administrative support for entrepreneurs and start-up companies. Non-parametric statistical techniques are used to compare between regions, considering each regional business incubator as an ecosystem. The study focuses on six Spanish regions: Madrid, Catalonia, Castile-Leon, Aragon, Basque Country and Galicia. © 2023 Elsevier Inc.
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This study examines whether founding generation managed family firms are capable of responding proactively to the COVID-19 disruption via firm renewal. We used a unique global COVID-19 crisis specific survey dataset comprising of 2,130 family firm observations. Our findings indicate that in comparison to the later generations, founding generation-managed family firms only do better at strategic renewal as a response to the crisis when they have sufficient managerial capabilities. Our study recommends that family businesses, especially those managed by the founding generations should emphasize managerial capabilities rather than merely focusing on socioemotional wealth (SEW) when deciding on crisis coping strategies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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PurposeThis study aims to assess the effect of the COVID 19 on small and medium-sized family firms' risk-taking in Iraq.Design/methodology/approachData was collected by distributing the questioners. The statistical population consists of 600 employers and small and medium-sized family and non-family firm managers. Hypothesis analysis was carried out after evaluating the questionnaire's validity and reliability using the structural equation method.FindingsThe results indicate that COVID 19 influences small and medium-size family and non-family firms' risk-taking.Originality/valueSince no study carried out so far on the effect of COVID 19 on risk-taking of family and non-family Iraqi small- and medium-enterprise firms and since the political-economic condition of Iraq has been affected recently due to the presence of ISIS, its effects, as well as the civil war that taken place before COVID 19, assessing such a topic can contribute to the development of science and knowledge in this field.
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Communicating the familiness of the firm allows family businesses to leverage a strategic resource: the idiosyncratic characteristics of the family firms. Drawing on the ontological perspective of the nature of family firm, this study investigates the effect of family firms' characteristics on consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for family firms' products in an online environment. The study presents a novel context of analysis investigating the mediating effect of frequency of purchase and peer-to-peer online reviews in the digital channel. Results offer support for a direct effect of the family firms' characteristics on consumers' WTP and validate the total effect of mediation of frequency of purchase and peer-to-peer online reviews. The findings provide intriguing implications for practitioners. Defining the antecedents of consumers' WTP for family firms in the online channel shall be helpful for managers to create more efficient communication and marketing campaigns, with the effect of deploying more customer-centric revenue management techniques.
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Communicating the familiness of the firm allows family businesses to leverage a strategic resource: the idiosyncratic characteristics of the family firms. Drawing on the ontological perspective of the nature of family firm, this study investigates the effect of family firms' characteristics on consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for family firms' products in an online environment. The study presents a novel context of analysis investigating the mediating effect of frequency of purchase and peer-to-peer online reviews in the digital channel. Results offer support for a direct effect of the family firms' characteristics on consumers' WTP and validate the total effect of mediation of frequency of purchase and peer-to-peer online reviews. The findings provide intriguing implications for practitioners. Defining the antecedents of consumers' WTP for family firms in the online channel shall be helpful for managers to create more efficient communication and marketing campaigns, with the effect of deploying more customer-centric revenue management techniques.
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Purpose-This study aims to fulfil a twofold purpose: first, to discuss the changes and unique challenges that family firms (FFs) face during the COVID-19 pandemic and/or they will face in the post-COVID era, and second, to reflect on emerging research directions and contextual factors that should be taken into account in future explorations for the benefit of FF scholars who will study post-COVID FF internationalisation. Design/methodology/approach-To address the twofold purpose of the study, we conduct an integrative review of 31 peer-reviewed journal articles in the international business (IB) and FF literature on COVID-19, FFs and internationalisation. Findings-COVID-19 brought changes in IB strategies, IB relationships and human resource management. In responding and/or adapting to those changes, during and post-COVID, FFs face and are expected to face challenges that mainly refer to FFs' transition to digitalisation and the simultaneous preservation of socio-emotional wealth dimensions while maintaining their international presence. The authors suggest that future research explores the role of digitalisation in achieving FFs' internationalisation, IB relationship building activities and training and leading international employees. Further contextual factors (e.g. succession issues, family structures) should also be accounted for when exploring such post-COVID IB phenomena. Originality/value-This study comprises an initial attempt to encompass the interface of FF internationalisation and COVID-19. It also proposes research directions that are likely to set the stage in FFs' post-COVID internationalisation research.
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This study examines whether founding generation managed family firms are capable of responding proactively to the COVID-19 disruption via firm renewal. We used a unique global COVID-19 crisis specific survey dataset comprising of 2,130 family firm observations. Our findings indicate that in comparison to the later generations, founding generation-managed family firms only do better at strategic renewal as a response to the crisis when they have sufficient managerial capabilities. Our study recommends that family businesses, especially those managed by the founding generations should emphasize managerial capabilities rather than merely focusing on socioemotional wealth (SEW) when deciding on crisis coping strategies.
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These are constantly changing times for the tourism industry. The COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying negative economic effects significantly impacted customer behavior and accelerated the need for companies to innovate. Business model innovation (BMI) is ideal for overcome these challenges by innovating the very core of the firm. However, siloed BMI thinking is insufficient: firms need a more holistic approach. We expand the current understanding of business model innovation by proposing a framework that integrates relevant dimensions (change impulses and business model configurations), context factors (service newness and degree of change or destination characteristics), and the outcomes of BMI initiatives into a comprehensive model for the tourism industry context. With our work, we want to guide future research and expand the currently unbalanced, heterogeneous picture of BMI in service industries.
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Today's world of 21st-century business is said to be a VUCA (Volatility-Uncertainty-Complexity-Ambiguity) world. VUCA describes the fast pace of change in the business environment. It has largely been led by the disruption brought about by technology-led human resources departments within organisations to revise strategy approaches and methods to face these emerging challenges. Research studies show that more than two-thirds of the companies in the world belong to family businesses. In the family business, the owners and HR should see what is going on in the business environment and update the situation. As most family businesses have family members in key positions, the tricky issues faced by family businesses are mostly about handling family and non-family members and creating effective HR policies. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 and 2020 has disrupted their business in unexpected ways. This chapter explores different HR practices adopted by the family business and suggests effective HR practices and procedures to meet the multiple challenges in the family business. The chapter also analyses the strategies of HR practices followed by some top family business firms worldwide. The chapter is formed as a meta-synthesis. It provides more qualitative inputs related to recent challenges and effective HR practices adopted in the technologically competitive era and during the COVID-19 pandemic period. © 2022 World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
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By combining agency theory and the resource- and capabilities-based view, this paper aims to unveil the influence of family firm heterogeneity on environmental performance. Previous results are inconsistent about how the specific features of this type of business contribute to better environmental protection performance. We analyse a number of variables related to the management, ownership and corporate governance characteristics of the family business and their individual influence on environmental performance. We test our hypotheses using a database of 748 family firms in the Spanish tourism sector. This economic sector, which is mostly composed of family businesses, puts great pressure on the environment. As such, family firms must take an active role in the resolution of the environmental problems that afflict society. We find that the effects of a family-controlled ownership and management structure on environmental performance are negative. Family-founder firms with a high degree of family control also are shown to have a negative relationship with environmental performance. However, the existence of a formal management mechanism, such as a management committee, emerges as the most powerful structural factor in facilitating the achievement of environmental objectives. The conclusions drawn from this study allow us to outline future lines of research as well as recommendations for practitioners. Our study responds to the call made in the literature to delve deeper into the heterogeneity of the family business, and specifically to determine which of its characteristic features allow this type of business to achieve better environmental performance.
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This research study focuses on the employee's job performance of private small firms during the post COVID-19 situation. After the COVID these small family firms try to regain their business, but their efforts are not that much successful. This situation creates a financial crisis in these firms, and they are unable to provide sufficient monetary rewards to their employees. This situation creates unrest among the employees of these small firms. To manage this issue, social rewards and psychological rewards played their role. The study uses a causal research design with a correlational study design in a non-contrived environment. Minimal researcher interference has been assured. AMOS 24 has dealt with the mediation in study design with bootstrap methodology. The study was conducted on 250 employees of different private small family firms across Punjab province using a proportionate stratified sampling technique. A study's finding suggests that top management enhances employee performance in their organizations by introducing the organization's psychological rewards. In contrast, introducing social rewards does not significantly impact employee performance while considering satisfaction and motivation as a mediating variable.