Frank Lambrechts

• PhD in Social Sciences, PhD in Business Economics
• Full Professor (Hoogleraar) at Hasselt University

Process consultation as conceived and reformulated several times by Edgar Schein constitutes a seminal contribution to the process of organization development in general and to the definition of the helping role of the consultant in particular. Under the pressure of a pragmatic turn in organizational change work, the practice of process consultatio...

For more than 50 years, Edgar H. Schein, the Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, has creatively shaped management and organizational scholarship and practice. He is the author of 15 books, including Process Consultation Revisited, Organizational Culture and Leader...

David Cooperrider and Ronald Fry are professors of organizational behavior at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). CWRU’s Department of Organizational Behavior is consistently acknowledged as one of the best in the world by the Financial Times. Together with their mentor, Suresh Srivastva, they created Appre...

This study focuses on family owner-nonfamily CEO relational practices and what these relational practices constrain and potentiate in family firm CEO succession. Our main contribution is developing a constructionist relational practice perspective and approach as an alternative to the entitative view that dominates the family business literature. W...

Plain English Summary Openness as boundary work is a significant challenge for many family firms but is critically important in an increasingly complex business environment. We develop a generative framework and future research agenda. Our main implications are for (1) research: our conceptual framework on openness as boundary work and the research...

Strategic change is essential for an organization’s long-term performance and survival. Research has investigated how governance structures, organizational values, capabilities, and firm size, in isolation from one another, influence family firms’ strategic change, yet insights in family firm literature suggest the need to examine the fit among the...

What drives eco-innovations among family SMEs? Given the mixed findings about family firms' engagement in environmental practices, this question has profound implications for academia and practitioners. By applying the mixed gamble lens, we propose an inverted U-shape relationship between financial performance satisfaction and the extent to which f...

Purpose This study aims to unravel a potential determinant of employee engagement in family firms. In particular, we focus on the role of the CEO by studying the influence of CEO transformational leadership on employee engagement. Moreover, we look into the potential mediating psychological safety might play in this relationship. Design/methodolog...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine how informational faultlines on a board affect the management of knowledge owned by directors and the consequences on organizational performance. In this study, informational faultlines are defined as hypothetical lines that divide a group into relatively homogeneous subgroups based on the alignment o...

To learn more about the possibilities for an appreciative co-inquiry into challenging interrelations between human beings and the more-than-human world, Bert Verleysen and Styn Grieten interviewed Griet Bouwen, an Appreciative Inquiry practitioner, narrative story-weaver, trained ecotuner, and social work teacher. She describes the purpose of her c...

This study investigates the impact of multiple directorships on board meeting attendance at the individual director level. By using the individual director attendance rate in Pakistani-listed firms, we find no direct effect of multiple board appointments (director busyness) on the tendency to remain absent from board meetings, even not when making...

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-respond...

This article studies the impact of emotional dissonance experienced in interactions with the CEO on affective organizational commitment in family firm top management teams. We argue that this relationship will be mediated by the level of satisfaction with the CEO. Additionally, we propose that CEO ownership will have a moderating effect. Using a mu...

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-base...

Human resources are paramount to family firms and to families in business because they are essential for achieving human flourishing and building family businesses that last for generations. Despite the increasing focus on HR in recent years, our understanding of the drivers, processes, and outcomes of family firm HR practices is still in its infan...

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 hol...

Manuscript Type Empirical 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 th...

This study investigates the effect of multiple directorships on firm performance, using a database of non‐financial firms listed on the Pakistan stock exchange. Prior literature provides inconsistent evidence on the relationship between multiple directorships and firm performance in an emerging country context, which may be the result of overlookin...

Adopting an interpretive grounded theory approach, we find that key events in the early lives of next-generation family members fuel a sense of belonging and identity, which lies at the heart of their socioemotional wealth. As next-generation family members interact more with the family business, they interpret nonfinancial aspects of the firm as a...

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...

Based on a unique, hand-collected data set, we examine the personality traits of nonfamily and family CEOs in privately held Belgian family firms using the Occupational Personality Questionnaire. We find significant differences between nonfamily and family CEOs with regard to nine personality traits: independent minded, democratic, data rational, b...

Objective We sought to explore the views patients have towards surgical safety and checklists. As a secondary aim, we explored if previous experience of error or other patient characteristics influence these views. Design A cross-sectional survey study design was applied. Participants The Flemish Patients’ Platform network and social media were use...

Four cases of open innovation in private family SMEs in low- and medium-technology industries are considered in order to examine the ways in which family firms can both foster their willingness and use their ability to engage in open innovation activities. Our cases illustrate how family SMEs can successfully engage in open innovation by handling m...

Introduction Nursing handover is a process central to the delivery of high-quality and safe care. We aimed to improve the quality of nursing handover from the emergency department to ward and intensive care unit (ICU). Methods A quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group pre-test — post-test design was applied. Handover quality was measured u...

The objective of this study was to improve the implementation of a standardised handover form and corresponding procedure for nursing handover of patients transferred from the emergency department to a hospital ward or the ICU. From a systems perspective, we learn that the road to improved quality of intrahospital nursing handover is long and hampe...

Recent research on the actual behaviour of boards suggests that more attention should be given to group dynamics in boards of directors. Therefore, we investigate if faultlines are detrimental to the role performance of boards of directors in family firms. In contrast to previous studies that only focus on one attribute, we use a more encompassing...

Objective: The objective of this review is to obtain a better understanding of the user-related barriers against, and facilitators for, the implementation of surgical safety checklists. Methods: We searched MEDLINE for articles describing stakeholders' perspectives regarding, and experiences with, the implementation of surgical safety checklists...

While the current family business literature has deeply informed our understanding of the career intentions of adolescents with a family background in business, a salient gap emerges regarding the ways in which family business involvement impacts the careers of the next generation. This article reports the empirical results of an interpretive quali...

België staat voor een enorme uitdaging: 20.000 Belgische bedrijven zullen de eerstkomende jaren op zoek moeten naar een CEO opvolger. Het vinden van de juiste opvolger is voor deze bedrijven cruciaal voor het voortbestaan van de onderneming. Dit boek gaat specifiek in op het CEO opvolgingsproces in familiebedrijven. Traditiegetrouw kiezen familiebe...

This study examines the role of trust in the relationship between an owner and a nonfamily CEO using a multiple case study design. Our sample consists of seven Belgian privately-held family firms who have hired a nonfamily CEO. Based on our findings, we suggest that the formation of trust is the key to success of the nonfamily CEO. We present a con...

Family firms serve as the backbone of many economies throughout the world. Few family firms, however, manage to survive into the next generations. When it comes to succession, the owner has to choose between appointing a family member, selling the firm, or hiring a non-family member to fulfill the function of the CEO.Despite the widespread attentio...

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is growing in popularity as a strength-based approach to organization and whole system development. Despite numerous accounts on AI’s outcomes positively impacting on organizations and persons, a dearth of quantitative studies exists measuring AI’s impact on individual-level outcomes. This quantitative study investigates h...

While current family business literature has deeply informed our understanding of the career path of succession, a salient gap emerges regarding the careers of all next generation family members, beyond their role as successors. This article reports the empirical results of a qualitative study into the phenomena of careers of next generation family...

In this paper we examine whether CEOs’ identification with the family firm contributes to their joy of work. Literature indicates that family business CEO’s identification with their firm can be both a burden and a joy. Building on psychological ownership literature, we argue that identification leads to joy of work under the condition of psycholo...

This study enriches our current understanding of the concept, formation, dimensions and implications of socioemotional wealth in family businesses using an interpretative qualitative research approach focusing on critical career experiences of family members.

When and how can a family firm successfully change the way work is organized? We will address this question from a relational embeddedness perspective. Our starting point is the idea that when the firm is highly embedded in the family, this will influence several organizational outcomes, like organizational innovation. Drawing on an inductive theor...

The common thread running within this article-based PhD thesis is the application and further development of a relational perspective on organizing, change and learning - a perspective which is grounded in social/relational constructionism. This perspective provides both insightful and actionable new knowledge to help understand and develop effecti...

Shared leadership; board of directors; scale development; board leadership

While it is generally acknowledged that leadership is important for both group and organizational performance, in the context of the board of directors it is a relatively unexplored phenomenon. To address this gap in research, this study aims to go beyond board leadership structure and focus on actual leadership behaviours and processes within the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to build a conceptual framework for understanding how in-depth joint supply chain learning can be successfully developed. This kind of learning is becoming increasingly important in highly turbulent and uncertain economic environments of new and growing interdependencies and complexities. Design/methodology/ap...

How and why do some family firms succeed in combining stability and change, whereas others do not? This paper presents a conceptual model offering an answer to this question. In order to remain competitive in today’s economy, organizations need to be flexible, they need to be able to change the way work is organized and thus initiate and implement...

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate and propose a concept of Entrepreneurial Resourcefulness in the context of family business. The critical concern derives from the fact that succesful economic performance is getting increasingly complicated, and requires constant learning from experience. Family firms offer versatile research ground...

Supply chain learning (SCL) as reciprocal learning between interdependent partners becomes increasingly important for joint system optimization and development in highly complex business situations. There is a growing consensus that the overall effectiveness and development of a supply chain is a function of the willingness and capacity of its indi...

The evolution of family business research and education has been largely practice-driven (Sharma, Hoy, Astrachan, & Koiranen, 2007). This may have caused some shortcomings in theoretical robustness and conceptual accuracy, but in turn, the close connection between research, education and practice has helped in achieving pragmatic validity and relev...

This paper estimates the effects of four intangible resources —family organizational culture, family firm reputation, human capital and networks— and their combinations on firm performance in a private-family firm setting. Contrary to previous research, we find that none of the studied resources have a significant effect on firm performance when lo...

This paper introduces a conceptual model discussing a levers of control perspective on organizational innovation in family firms. In order to remain competitive, firms need to be able to successfully change the way work is organized, as it may lead to a heightened capacity to innovate in the future or organizational learning (Bouwen & Fry, 1991). S...

This paper investigates how the board of directors affects product and process innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through their control role. Researchers so far mainly relied on agency theory. However, we argue that the agency theory assumptions apply less in SMEs and therefore develop new theory for explaining this relationshi...

The common thread running within this article-based PhD thesis is the application and further development of a relational perspective on organizing, change and learning - a perspective which is grounded in social/relational constructionism. This perspective provides both insightful and actionable new knowledge to help understand and develop effecti...

In the slipstream of several large-scale corporate scandals, the board of directors has gained a pivotal position in the corporate governance debate. However, due to an overreliance on particular methodological (i.e. input–output studies) and theoretical (i.e. agency theory) research fortresses in past board research, academic knowledge concerning...

In the slipstream of several large-scale corporate scandals, the board of directors has gained a pivotal position in the corporate governance debate. However, due to an overreliance on particular methodological (i.e., input-output studies) and theoretical (i.e., agency theory) research fortresses in past board research, academic knowledge concernin...

As one of the primary internal governance mechanisms available to a firm, the board of directors has attracted considerable research attention in the past few decades. Nevertheless, mainly due to particular theoretical (i.e. agency theory) and methodological (i.e., input-output approach) limitations characterizing past research, academic knowledge...

Een familiale onderneming wordt in haar groeiproces vaak geconfronteerd met drie scharnierbeslissingen: - Hoe mijn bedrijf structureren? Hoe beter beslissen in mijn bedrijf? - Hoe mijn bedrijf financieren: voortzetten of verkopen? - Wat met de volgende generatie? Deze vragen leiden ons naar de publicatie van het boek 'Corporate Governance in het f...

Our paper contributes to the question: "How can we define a family firm?" We argue that the roots of this question can be found in the ownership of the firm, which in this case is a family. We argue for an approach that emphasizes its psychological dimension, that is, the feeling of ownership, as crucial for our understanding of family businesses....

Dit hoofdstuk gaat dieper in op de theoretische grondslagen van Appreciative Inquiry (AI) als veranderfilosofie en -benadering. De academische ontstaansgeschiedenis wordt geschetst, de uitgangspunten en principes van AI worden grondig uitgediept en AI wordt naast de meer courante 'problem-solving' benadering gezet. De auteurs benadrukken sterk dat...

This article examines why a private family SME with several governance needs, works with a paper or rubber-stamp board and how the firm then manages its governance needs. Based on an in-depth case study, we suggest that the explanation for this apparent paradox might be found in the fact that board empowerment is determined by the governance needs...

This theoretical paper aims to contribute to the promising stream of research which focuses on behavioural perspectives and processes within the corporate board, by delving into one of the research areas perhaps plagued most by the well-known methodological (i.e., input-output studies) and theoretical (i.e., agency theory) research fortresses of pa...

Hoe scoort uw familiebedrijf op de 4 hefbomen?

This paper introduces a conceptual model discussing a levers of control perspective on organizational innovation in family firms. In order to remain competitive, firms need to be able to successfully change the way work is organized, as it may lead to a heightened capacity to innovate in the future (Bouwen & Fry, 1991). Successful organizational in...

Purpose/topic of research This paper introduces a conceptual model discussing agency consequences of a nonfamily CEO in private family firms. Private family firms have a unique ownership structure in that their founders or descendants are among the largest shareholders (concentrated ownership), often manage the firm and usually have a seat on the b...

Innovation in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) is one of the main objectives set in the Lisbon agenda. In this paper, a large-scale intervention program is reflected upon that aimed for the enhancement of innovation in 650 SMEs in the Euregion Meuse-Rhine. In particular, four lessons are drawn concerning the design and implementation of ro...

This paper links the psychological component of ownership to family firm governance and performance. By introducing insights on psychological ownership within a general agency framework, we unlock deeper understanding of agency relationships in family firms. We advance theory that in family firms psychological ownership has both a dark side and a b...

Traditionally, board research has been overshadowed by an overreliance on agency theory and input-output studies directly linking board demographics to board and firm performance. Recently, however, calls have been made to open up the black box created by such an approach through studying the inner workings of the illustrious boardroom. This paper...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to profile the way in which Volvo Cars Gent (VCG) Belgium and its suppliers succeed in managing their interdependencies on HRM issues through a shared HRM collaborative, called the Suppliers Team Volvo Cars HRM forum (STVC‐HRM). Design/methodology/approach A case study approach is used to develop understanding...

The present study investigated the virtual organization model from a relational constructionist perspective. Since the beginning of the nineties, virtual organizations are applauded as the most economically efficient organizational structure to confront the challenges of increasing global competition and environmental complexity. However, when look...

Many organizational change efforts don’t live up to their expectations, with inefficiencies in the interaction process between organizational actors as one of the main potential reasons for this failure. Therefore, this paper will focus on the impact of interaction processes on change within the specific organizational context of family firms. Fami...

This paper introduces a relational practice perspective to look at organizational change in family firms. At present there is a scarcity of studies on family firm change. Family firms yet represent the majority of all businesses in countries around the world. We propose that it is mainly the lack of relational quality among the parties involved tha...

More than two thirds of all organizational change processes fail, carrying with them enormous social and economic consequences. The cause of failure is usually ascribed to the way actors co-generate the change process. Given the low success ratio, there is an urgent need for more actionable knowledge or generative theory on change. This is knowledg...

Although family business scholars recently introduced ‘psychological ownership’ as a key non-financial value creator, its exact nature and dynamics in family firms remain unclear. To fill this important gap in the literature, we first critically review the concept, the roots and its associated mechanisms, which as we show, can be found in a family...

Workplace development has been sailing with a fair wind in Finland in recent years. An increasing number of workplaces, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs), are in the process of reinventing their forms of work organization and systems of management. The Finnish government and the social partners have adopted a proactive role in mainstrea...

In this paper, we gain insight into how intangible value drivers play a role and how social capital can be created in a process of organizational change. The building blocks of relational social capital are examined in closer detail. A Relational Practice Perspective puts concrete observable characteristics of social capital right in the middle of...

Work values and facets of job satisfaction as predictors of employees' attitude to change in higher education Work values and facets of job satisfaction as predictors of employees' attitude to change in higher education D. Berings, S. Grieten, F. Lambrechts & H. De Witte, Gedrag & Organisatie, volume 21, November 2008, nr. 4, pp. 493-517 The presen...

The present study investigated in a sample of 284 employees of a medium-sized college in Flanders how work values and facets of job satisfaction are related to the attitude to change. Nine facets of job satisfaction explain 21% of the variance in the attitude to change. Eleven work values explain 13%. Comparison of personnel categories reveals that...

More than two thirds of all change processes in organizations fail to achieve their intended results. This has enormous social and economic consequences. The cause of failure is usually ascribed to the manner in which a diversity of actors with different perspectives co-generate the change process. When people in organizations do things as usual, w...

Het Finse overheidsprogramma TYKES wordt wereldwijd beschouwd als een inspirerende praktijk betreffende langlopende overheidsprogramma’s die organisatieontwikkeling willen stimuleren op nationaal niveau. Tykes stimuleert manieren van werken in Finse organisaties die tegelijkertijd de productiviteit én de kwaliteit van arbeid verbeteren. Dit wordt w...

open your eyes ESF: Bijdragen tot de ontwikkeling van de werkgelegenheid door het bevorderen van inzetbaarheid, ondernemerschap, aanpasbaarheid en gelijke kansen, en door het investeren in menselijke hulpbronnen.

In deze uitgave maken we drie praktijkverhalen zichtbaar rond “hoe concreet te werken aan werkgoesting en organisatieontwikkeling binnen een organisatie”. We nemen de lezer mee in drie begeleidingstrajecten die vanuit het Werkgoesting-project zijn opgezet en/of ondersteund: (1) Generatief leren tussen ‘meester’ en ‘gezel’ ingebed in een ruimer ont...

Purpose. To inquire into a reemployment process of older managers in a setting of organizational restructuring, a context in which the dominant answer of organizations consists of stimulating early retirement. Methodology. Fourteen reemployed older managers, and the HR manager in a career counseling role, were interviewed to learn about the quality...