Toward a Typology of Family Firm Corporate Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship in family firms: an updated bibliometric overview

Research on entrepreneurship in family firms has grown exponentially over the past two decades. Due to the various theoretical perspectives and contexts found here however, this body of research remains fragmented, with a unified understanding of the current state of knowledge and the opportunities for future research in the field continuing to lack. In this study, we address this gap by conducting an updated bibliometric analysis of the research on entrepreneurship in family firms. Here we integrate two different bibliometric methods to provide a more comprehensive picture of the field, unveiling its intellectual foundations and current research discourses and how these two are related. To do this, we first conduct a co-citation analysis clustering the intellectual foundations of the research on entrepreneurship in family firms. Second, a bibliographic coupling of recent publications from 2010 to 2021 provides a transparent structure of current research discourses. Third, analyzing which intellectual foundations are primarily cited in each current research stream unveils the dominant theoretical paradigms in the current state of research. Analyzing 570 published studies, we identified four intellectual foundations of entrepreneurship in family firms: socioemotional wealth (SEW), entrepreneurial orientation, family-embedded resources, and agency theory. The current research can be clustered into seven main discourses: entrepreneurial motivation, gender and success, entrepreneurial orientation, individual and firm-level characteristics, the family embedded network, family firm internationalization, and family heterogeneity. An integrative network diagram provides an overview of the research field’s development while also identifying the gaps to be addressed by future research.

Dynamic capabilities: antecedents and implications for firms' performance

Purpose

This paper aims to explore a new causal link between learning, market and entrepreneurial orientations and firms' performance by introducing dynamic capabilities and competitive advantages as mediator variables.

Design/methodology/approach

The mediating role of dynamic capabilities and competitive advantages is tested using a sample of 1,190 Portuguese firms, and structural equation models.

Findings

It is shown that dynamic capabilities mediate the relationship between the three orientations–learning, market and entrepreneurial–and competitive advantages of differentiation and cost leadership, and both competitive advantages lead to firm's performance. It is also shown that learning orientation is an antecedent of market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation.

Practical implications

This research shows that firm's performance depends on the capacity of firms to learn, innovate, be proactive, take risks and collect the best market data. Indeed, by optimizing the internal management and knowledge dissemination, firms will develop a set of capabilities and competitive advantages that lead to an appropriate response to market challenges.

Originality/value

This study tests the relationship between strategic orientations and firm's performance by taking the mediating effects of dynamic capabilities and competitive advantages into account. This research was conducted in Portugal.

The way toward a new entrepreneurial balance in business succession processes

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the under-researched family-external business succession process. It makes use of entrepreneurship theory in order to conceptualize this temporal process. This allows for an operationalization of entrepreneurial functions and tracking them during the two main phases of such processes. This study provides a starting point for further endeavors into researching family-external succession processes.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is based on an explorative, quasi-longitudinal, qualitative and multiple case-study approach. It became possible to create trust with stakeholders in three family firms and to conduct face-to-face interviews with a total of 12 interviewees, generating over 300 transcript pages. The case interviews were validated through two expert interviews. A priori research propositions were tested and modified, if deemed necessary.

Findings

Entrepreneurial functions during the two main phases of the process seem to be carried out and aligned depending on several influencing factors: delegation of responsibilities from owner-managers to qualified employees; incumbent owner-managers being heavily involved in the succession’s facilitation and neglecting some entrepreneurial functions; and as a result new owner-managers being forced to prioritize certain functions in the second phase.

Originality/value

This paper benefits from a rather unique access to three family firms undergoing succession in the DACH-region. Therefore, it became possible to study the family-external succession process by including various stakeholders involved. Such an inclusion of perspectives has been suggested by family business scholars for a long time.

Knowledge, Renewal and Flexibility: Exploratory Research in Family Firms

This study aims to explore how family firms pursue strategies that promote strategic flexibility and knowledge-management (KM) practices to respond to strategic-renewal goals. Specifically, based on a knowledge-based view of the firm, the following research question is proposed: Are there heterogeneous groups of family firms in terms of knowledge management, strategic flexibility and strategic renewal goals? To answer this question, an exploratory study using a two-step cluster analysis is developed. It reveals natural groupings from a sample of 288 small and medium-sized Spanish family enterprises (SMEs). The results obtained identified three distinctive clusters of family firms, namely proactive family firms, transitional or adaptive family firms, and rigid family firms. After two-step cluster analysis, we also conducted analysis of variance (ANOVA) to confirm that significant differences amongst the three clusters exist. After heterogeneity been confirmed, a further profile of the cluster solution was provided by using CEO and board characteristics, as well as the generational stage of the company. The findings offer some counterbalance for those studies that tend to study family businesses as a homogeneous entity, thus permitting researchers to access more information, providing rich explanations for renewal managerial decision-making purposes in family firm contexts.