Purpose This study explores how and when intuitive forms of planning can be used in a family firm's succession process. Design/methodology/approach The study uses an extended focus group meeting, consisting of individual, group and subgroup discussions with seven highly experienced external family business advisors in the Netherlands to gain a holistic understanding of the succession process and its underlying logic. The study also employs pre- ...
We investigate which companies are more inclined to respond with green innovation to ecological community logics. We propose that the noneconomic utility of doing so - in the form of personal reputation gains for business owners - is greater when owner identifiability is higher, and that owner identifiability therefore intensifies the effect of normative ecological community pressures on firm-level green innovation. Our hypotheses are tested on ...
This study analyzes the effect that a firm's level of digitalization has on its open innovation activities. Specifically, we argue that digitalization facilitates collaboration with a wider set of technology partners in the innovation process (i.e., breadth of technological collaboration). In addition, our arguments contend that certain socioemotional factors in the particular context of family firms may diminish this facilitating aspect. We ...
This study examines the interplay between two influential yet opposing shareholder types-family blockholders and hedge funds-in relation to corporate innovation output. Using panel data on U.S. publicly traded firms listed in the S&P 1500, we find that family blockholders have a negative effect on radical innovation output in the form of citation-weighted patents and that this negative effect is intensified in the presence of activist hedge ...
The question of whether family firms have a higher or lower labor productivity than nonfamily firms has led to a stream of inconsistent evidence. We address this polarized debate by arguing that the idiosyncratic workforce characteristics combined with the dual (socioemotional versus financial) wealth concerns of family firms may differ across the labor productivity distribution, which has a varying impact on the labor productivity differences ...
This article studies the relationship between familiness, approached from a new systems theory perspective, and decision-making quality in family firm top management teams. We focus on two potential explanations of this relationship by examining the mediating role of emotional dissonance and perceived team support. A hand-collected multiple-respondent dataset of 212 top managers from 45 Belgian family firm TMTs shows a positive relationship ...
External knowledge has been found to be vital in generating innovation. However, little is known about the conditions under which firms can benefit from utilizing specific external knowledge sources. Using the knowledge-based view as our theoretical underpinning, we empirically examine how the usage of knowledge gained from market-and science-based sources influences innovation performance differently between family and non-family firms. An ...
Informal family governance mechanisms are the self-enforcing interactions and symbols used by a business family to nurture family relationships and manage expectations. While previous research points to the positive influence of identity and career alignment on the engagement and commitment of next-generation members towards their family enterprise, it has remained unclear how this alignment develops. This exploratory study of a European ...
Research Question/Issue This study investigates the moderating role of social category faultlines in the relationship between firm performance and CEO dismissal. We also examine how two board contingencies-the presence of board evaluation and the number of board committees-affect how social category faultlines moderate the performance-CEO dismissal relationship. Research Findings/Insights Using panel data on Belgian listed firms covering 2006 to ...