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Narratives of survival: How entrepreneurial families narrate their longevity. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research.
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This work focuses on the longevity of family business to identify those factors capable of influencing it. In order to identify these factors, was conducted a literature review which produced 3 assumptions, one for each driver identified. Subsequently, it was carried out a quantitative analysis on two samples of centenary family businesses belonging to different geographical areas, one Italian and one Spanish, with the aim of testing the validity of the assumptions and verifying similarities, differences and points of contact between the two selected samples. The results of this survey were operationalized into specific variables and statistically processed to offer a complete reconnaissance of the universe under investigation. Therefore, the aim of this work is giving a contribution to the literature concerning family businesses, identifying the best practice that allow this specific type of business to be long-lived, solid and competitive over time. Sommario Il presente lavoro si focalizza sulla longevità delle imprese familiari allo scopo di individuare quei fattori capaci di influenzarla.
Over the past three decades, research on entrepreneurial identity (EI) has grown particularly rapidly, yet in seemingly disparate directions. To lend structure to this fragmented field of inquiry, our systematic integrative review maps and integrates EI research based on antecedents, content, outcomes as well as their relationships. In so doing, we reveal that the field revolves around two primary conceptualizations of EI as Property or Process. We suggest future avenues for examining the interplay between EI and temporal, socio-cognitive, and spatial contexts, and for investigating and theorizing overlooked mechanisms of reconstructing and losing EI.
This chapter critically explores the autobiographical narrative method developed by the German sociologist Fritz Schütze.1 We shall argue that the methodology can help to uncover domains of psycho-social experience that may be hard to reveal using other interviewing techniques. The method includes a close analysis of interview transcriptions, distinguishing particular textual, performative and affective dimensions of self narration. It can provide valuable insights into the ways in which personal experiences and emotional trajectories, partially shaped by kinship dynamics, socio-economic and political processes, can influence identity development and the formation of life attitudes. 2 As will become clear in this chapter, the method also frequently generates a useful reflective space for interviewees, allowing them to express, communicate and work through painful or confusing past experiences. This is less likely to happen using structured and semi-structured interview techniques, where frequent questions by the interviewer can hamper a process of deep inner reflection.
Purpose
Within a very short period of time, the worldwide pandemic triggered by the novel coronavirus has not only claimed numerous lives but also caused severe limitations to daily private as well as business life. Just about every company has been affected in one way or another. This first empirical study on the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on family firms allows initial conclusions to be drawn about family firm crisis management.
Design/methodology/approach
Exploratory qualitative research design based on 27 semi-structured interviews with key informants of family firms of all sizes in five Western European countries that are in different stages of the crisis.
Findings
The COVID-19 crisis represents a new type and quality of challenge for companies. These companies are applying measures that can be assigned to three different strategies to adapt to the crisis in the short term and emerge from it stronger in the long run. Our findings show how companies in all industries and of all sizes adapt their business models to changing environmental conditions within a short period of time. Finally, the findings also show that the crisis is bringing about a significant yet unintended cultural change. On the one hand, a stronger solidarity and cohesion within the company was observed, while on the other hand, the crisis has led to a tentative digitalization.
Originality/value
To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first empirical study in the management realm on the impacts of COVID-19 on (family) firms. It provides cross-national evidence of family firms' current reactions to the crisis.
Purpose – Investigation of family firm radical innovation is burgeoning but far less prevalent than studies of family firm innovation in general. Concurrently, studies repeatedly report that family firms exhibit mostly conservative and incremental innovation rather than more radical ones. This is unfortunate because without radical innovation, family firms risk a competency trap in which long-term competitiveness is lost to more innovative rivals. This situation has led to urgent calls among scholars to explicitly acknowledge the heterogeneity of family firm innovation and to understand the conditions for family firm radical innovation.
Design/methodology/approach – A systematic review of 51 papers categorized into four scholarly conversations build the foundation for a critical discussion of each line of inquiry.
Findings – This study analyzes 51 leading articles and identify four persistent theoretical positions: (1) RBV and capabilities, (2) agency and stewardship, (3) behavioral agency and socioemotional wealth, and (4) the ability and willingness paradox. The authors identify key research problems and research questions needing urgent scholarly and present a framework that captures their complementary and competing assumptions to enable rigorous future research.
Originality/value – To galvanize and spearhead future research efforts, this paper provides a critical analysis of the current understanding of family firm radical innovation with a specific emphasis on the theoretical assumptions at the core of existing investigations and the 8 most important research questions in need of answers.
Keywords – Family firm, radical innovation, family firm innovation, willingness and ability, socioemotional wealth, resources, agency, stewardship, family radical innovation assumptions
Paper type – Literature review
The inclusion of morally binding values such as religious—or in a broader sense, spiritual—values fundamentally alter organizational decision-making and ethical behavior. Family firms, being a particularly value-driven type of organization, provide ample room for religious beliefs to affect family, business, and individual decisions. The influence that the owning family is able to exert on value formation and preservation in the family business makes religious family firms an incubator for value-driven and faith-led decision-making and behavior. They represent a particularly rich and relevant context to re-assess the relationship between ethical beliefs, decision-making processes and behaviors in business organizations at the interface between family and professional logics. This Special Issue is dedicated to deepening our understanding of the role religious values and spirituality play in the formation of organizational ethical practices in faith-led family firms and resulting organizational and family-related outcomes. In this editorial, we introduce the 10 papers included in this Special Issue, which investigate the relationship between religion or spirituality and family firm ethical behavior in various geographical, cultural and religious contexts, using a multitude of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. By focusing on the effects of religious or spiritual orientations on both the business and the family, as well as on the values, norms and goals present in the family business system, further research can gain a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between religious and spiritual believes, and sustainable ethical behavior in family firms.
This third special issue of the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research is dedicated to examining institutional influences on the entrepreneurial behaviours of business families, family businesses, and family business groups. As the study of family entrepreneurship continues to expand and focus moves toward understanding heterogeneity among family firms, understanding the institutional context in which family firms exist—as well as the variation in entrepreneurial behaviours, families, firms, and business groups—becomes increasingly important. This special issue builds on the first two special issues in this journal by showcasing these relevant issues.
Family business narratives connect the past, present, and future. This chapter offers an initial conceptualization of the parts of narratives dedicated to myths, through a systems view of the family business. Bridging literatures from different fields ranging from history to strategic management, family psychotherapy, and anthropology, we suggest a dynamic process of myth formation and transformation along with its impact on both family and business systems over the life cycle.
The purpose of this book is to build upon the framework in Figure 1 by further fleshing out the heterogeneity nuances of family businesses and to extend the reach of the family business domain through the editorially reviewed chapters of family business scholars from diverse backgrounds with many originating outside of the management discipline. This edited volume is organized in five broad thematic areas: the present state of family business research, family governance, non-financial and financial dynamics, organizational behavior and human resource management, and strategies.
Entrepreneurial legacies play an important role in transgenerational entrepreneurship, yet little is known about their nature and development. Through a multilayered analysis of narratives drawn from three generations of a single business family, we document that entrepreneurial legacies feature both stable and fluid elements, and that forward-looking components in family storytelling—which we refer to as “anticipated futures”—affect this dynamic character. We further show how such narratives can prompt, sustain, and disrupt entrepreneurship across multiple generations. Our findings offer insights that refine our understanding of entrepreneurial legacies beyond mere projections of the past through secondhand imprinting.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand how family businesses (FBs) build their collective identity through transgenerational narratives. The authors examine the processes through which organizational meanings are socially constructed through narratives about individuals who are closely linked to the organizations (and their family).
Design/methodology/approach
Based on qualitative research, the authors study a 180-year old Spanish Pharmaceutical FB. Using longitudinal data, the authors analyze the narratives of six family members and two non-family executives. The authors use open-ended questions to allow interviewees to elaborate their own stories, following previous studies using extended narratives that leave the stage to the narrator.
Findings
Findings based on the stories of the eight interviewees (voice) suggest that the FB identity was initiated by the founder’s way to grow the business (fictionality). In turn the family shaped the identity of the FB, being reshaped by the stories arising from next generations’ entry into the business (reflexivity). While the FB identity reflects that of the owners, this identity is enduring but dynamic (temporality), not only shaped by the business family behind, but also conditioned by the environment.
Originality/value
The authors contribute to the growing literature adopting a narrative method to study phenomena in FBs. Thanks to the richness of the empirical material, a narrative method is particularly suited – and novel – for understanding collective identity, a crucial organizational resource that is closely linked to leadership in the FB.
Nowadays, family firms account for a large part of the economy all around the world. Their longevity supposes that their unique characteristics make them efficient at managing risks in turbulent times. Drawing upon the concept of organisational resilience, this article proposes to theoretically investigate how the unique nature of family firms affects absorption, renewal and learning capacities. Based on these reflexions, this article proposes that the family character of the firm is positively related to absorption and learning capacities while being negatively linked with renewal capacity. It also stresses the importance to consider a contingency framework to better understand organizational resilience within family firms. Finally, it provides directions for future research to address various empirical gaps in the field.
In steering towards the future, innovation managers are commonly advised to dismiss the old and make way for the new. However, such “recency bias” may significantly limit a firm’s innovation potential and prevent it from realizing the benefits of past knowledge. We argue that the temporal dimension of innovation deserves more research attention. Combining prior research on innovation, dynamic capabilities and family business, we conceptualize a new product innovation strategy called innovation through tradition (ITT) and identify its underlying capabilities of interiorizing and reinterpreting past knowledge. The illustrative cases of six long-lasting family businesses (Aboca, Apreamare, Beretta, Lavazza, Sangalli and Vibram) are analyzed and discussed, hence exemplifying how firms that build long-lasting and intimate links with their traditions can be extremely innovative while remaining firmly anchored to the past. These examples help visualize theoretical concepts and recognize the potential advantages of past knowledge in terms of value creation and capture. We develop an agenda for future research aimed at improving our understanding of the temporal search processes involved in the ITT strategy, within and outside the family business field, and thus contribute to innovation and organizational learning studies. Managers of non-family firms can learn from the family businesses that successfully use ITT to create and nurture a competitive advantage and emulate them by leveraging rather than discarding tradition.
Innovation is a key determinant of long-term success for family firms. We apply a multiple case study research design to investigate the relationship between stories that are shared among family members across generations and the family firms’ innovations. We derive a set of eight propositions suggesting that founder focus is negatively, and family focus is positively associated with innovation. We further propose that these relationships are mediated by the scope of decision-making options, the distribution of decision-making power between generations, and the role of conflict in the families.
This paper challenges the prevalent notion that family-owned firms are more risk averse than publicly owned firms. Using behavioral theory, we argue that for family firms, the primary reference point is the loss of their socioemotional wealth, and to avoid those losses, family firms are willing to accept a significant risk to their performance; yet at the same time, they avoid risky business decisions that might aggravate that risk. Thus, we propose that the predictions of behavioral theory differ depending on family ownership. We confirm our hypotheses using a population of 1,237 family-owned olive oil mills in Southern Spain who faced the choice during a 54-year period of becoming a member of a cooperative, a decision associated with loss of family control but lower business risk, or remaining independent, which preserves the family's socioemotional wealth but greatly increases its performance hazard. As shown in this study, family firms may be risk willing and risk averse at the same time.
This paper identifies the knowledge development and knowledge gaps in business and management research on resilience, based on a systematic review of influential publications among 339 papers, books and book chapters published between 1977 and 2014. Analyzing these records shows that resilience research has developed into five research streams, or lines of enquiry, which view resilience either as (1) organizational responses to external threats, (2) organizational reliability, (3) employee strengths, (4) the adaptability of business models, or (5) design principles that reduce supply chain vulnerabilities and disruptions. A review of the five streams suggests three key findings: First, resilience has been conceptualized quite differently across studies, meaning that the different research streams have developed their own definitions, theories and understandings of resilience. Second, conceptual similarities and differences among these streams have not yet been explored, nor have insights been gleaned about any possible generalizable principles for developing resilience. Third, resilience has been operationalized quite differently, with few insights into the empirics for detecting resilience to future adversity (or the absence thereof). This paper outlines emerging research trends and pathways for future research, highlighting opportunities to integrate and expand on existing knowledge, as well as avenues for further investigating resilience in business and management studies.
One of the most significant challenges facing family firms is how to successfully manage succession from one generation of leaders to the next. In this paper, we contribute to existing understandings of this complex and difficult process by exploring how successors use family business succession narratives to legitimate their succession. Building on a case study of Alessi, a family-owned Italian design firm, we draw on the literature on organizational narratives to develop a framework for understanding family business succession narratives and present a typology of some of the narrative strategies that can be used during succession. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical ramifications of a narrative view of succession in family firms.
Research shows that family firms are less entrepreneurial, on average, especially after the founder departs. There are notable exceptions, however, and so we build a new theory to explain how these exceptional firms accomplish transgenerational entrepreneurship. Specifically, we conducted in-depth interviews with owners and (potential) successors in 21 German wineries that are, on average, in their 11th generation. We introduce entrepreneurial legacy, which we define as the family's rhetorical reconstruction of past entrepreneurial achievements or resilience, and theorize that it motivates incumbent and next-generation owners to engage in strategic activities that foster transgenerational entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial legacy thus helps explain transgenerational entrepreneurship and has implications for family-firm, imprinting, and succession research.
Purpose
To underline that viewing entrepreneurship in the context of shifting career roles and professional identities, gendered organizational life and in the current societal context regarding working life (ageing, gender discrimination) provides us with new lenses and enables us to perceive the entrepreneurial identity as fluid and emergent.
Design/methodology/approach
A female entrepreneur's life‐story collected through a narrative interview is applied in the study. In this paper identities, organizations and societies in change form the basis for entrepreneurship. Treating entrepreneurship as a social process constrained by time and place allows it to gain new meanings and understandings of security, reliability, risk‐moderation that it has not previously seen to possess.
Findings
The paper presents the connections of time and place for entrepreneurship; first, by demonstrating how entrepreneurship as a phenomenon reflects the time and place of investigation; second, how time and place are applied as important elements in the individual story presented in the paper, and, third, how readings of time and narrative are applied to make sense of entrepreneurship in the story.
Research limitations/implications
The paper suggests that the social context (different times, places as well as, e.g. different roles, social identities and careers) should more frequently be studied within entrepreneurship research.
Practical implications
By portraying entrepreneurship from the non‐economic and non‐heroic standpoint, and reflecting the social changes that surround it, entrepreneurship is potentially made more accessible for a larger number of people.
Originality/value
The paper refuses the research of entrepreneurs as a general overriding, economic category and the quest for the “Theory of Entrepreneurship”.
he collapse of the roof of the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) Railroad Museum Roundhouse onto its collections during a snowstorm in 2003 provides a starting point for our exploration of the link between learning and rare events. The collapse occurred as the museum was preparing for another rare event: the Fair of the Iron Horse, an event planned to celebrate the 175th anniversary of American railroading. Our analysis of these rare events, grounded in data collected through interviews and archival materials, reveals that the issue is not so much what organizations learn "from" rare events but what they learn "through" rare events. Rare events are interruptions that trigger learning because they expose weaknesses and reveal unrealized behavioral potential. Moreover, we find that three organizing routines—interpreting, relating, and re-structuring—are strengthened and broadened across a series of interruptions. These organizing routines are critical to both learning and responding because they update understanding and reduce the ambiguity generated during a rare event. Ultimately, rare events provoke a reconsideration of organizational identity as the organization learns what it knows and who it is when it sees what it can do. In the case of the B&O Railroad Museum, we find that the roof collapse offered an opportunity for the organization to transform its identity from that of a museum to that of an attraction.
In this paper, we argue that the ability of a firm to recognize the value of new, external information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends is critical to its innovative capabilities. We label this capability a firm's absorptive capacity and suggest that it is largely a function of the firm's level of prior related knowledge. The discussion focuses first on the cognitive basis for an individual's absorptive capacity including, in particular, prior related knowledge and diversity of background. We then characterize the factors that influence absorptive capacity at the organizational level, how an organization's absorptive capacity differs from that of its individual members, and the role of diversity of expertise within an organization. We argue that the development of absorptive capacity, and, in turn, innovative performance are history- or path-dependent and argue how lack of investment in an area of expertise early on may foreclose the future development of a technical capability in that area. We formulate a model of firm investment in research and development (R&D), in which R&D contributes to a firm's absorptive capacity, and test predictions relating a firm's investment in R&D to the knowledge underlying technical change within an industry. Discussion focuses on the implications of absorptive capacity for the analysis of other related innovative activities, including basic research, the adoption and diffusion of innovations, and decisions to participate in cooperative R&D ventures.
Researchers have used the absorptive capacity construct to explain various organizational phenomena. In this article we review the literature to identify key dimensions of absorptive capacity and offer a reconceptualization of this construct. Building upon the dynamic capabilities view of the firm, we distinguish between a firm's potential and realized capacity. We then advance a model outlining the conditions when the firm's potential and realized capacities can differentially influence the creation and sustenance of its competitive advantage.
We develop a new perspective on leadership and identity in the family business using the concepts of identity process theory, transformative learning and identity work to demonstrate how the leader of a first- to second-generation transitioning family business in a traditional masculinist manufacturing sector constructs her identity in the face of significant identity threats personally and organisationally. We illustrate the interconnectedness between the leader’s identity, her lived experience, current context and enactment of her leadership. Our analysis demonstrates the applicability of identity process theory as a novel framework for identity research in family business, and of transformative learning as both a coping strategy and an identity workplace in the face of significant identity threats.
Literature concerning intra-family succession versus non-family succession is still limited. As a result, we know relatively little about the impact of an internal succession on keeping strategically relevant knowledge inside the business. Consequently, this chapter’s primary research interest is the interplay between market context and strategically relevant knowledge resources in long-lived family firms. Based on the market-based view and resource theory, we suggest that in some market environments, family-business-specific experiential knowledge forms a basis for competitive advantage and that such knowledge can be transferred to internal successors easier than to external successors. Several propositions are developed and discussed in relation to six case studies of long-lived family businesses from different market contexts. As a result, we put forward four revised propositions for future research to investigate.
This article aims to analyze how female successors describe their self-positioning in male-dominated family businesses, once the succession process from father/predecessor to daughter/successor has occurred. Using a narrative approach, we investigated the construction of the self as close to or distant from the father−s leadership style and whether the daughter−s leadership succession was accepted by or imposed on employees of the firm. The four stories that illustrate the process of self-positioning improve our understanding of female successors− subjectivity in developing historically-situated narratives. We identify different pathways by which the daughters constructed their route to self-positioning in their family firms, strengthening the idea of gender as a process embedded in social relationships.
Given the importance of family business to economies and societies, the persistence of gender inequality in succession requires further exploration. While gender theorizing has penetrated mainstream management theorizing, its application in family business literature remains underdeveloped: extant research conceptualizes gender as an objective property of individuals, synonymous with biological sex. In this paper, we adopt a social constructionist approach and study four cases of family business succession, revealing significant insights into how gender structures successor selection. We show how gender dynamics are more complicated than a binary view focused on gender category would imply. Specifically, we identify how family members, through discourses and interactions, socially construct the successor role, and how this gendered construction of the role frames a hierarchy of potential successors. This hierarchy is based on the combination of gender category and the extent to which an individual's traits and characteristics are perceived to align with that role.
Entrepreneurship Across Generations examines dimensions of identity, gender and learning to understand the complex fabric of family business. An interpretation of narratives from two generations in five families constitutes entrepreneurship as an inherently social, rather than individual, phenomenon.
- This paper describes the process of inducting theory using case studies from specifying the research questions to reaching closure. Some features of the process, such as problem definition and construct validation, are similar to hypothesis-testing research. Others, such as within-case analysis and replication logic, are unique to the inductive, case-oriented process. Overall, the process described here is highly iterative and tightly linked to data. This research approach is especially appropriate in new topic areas. The resultant theory is often novel, testable, and empirically valid. Finally, framebreaking insights, the tests of good theory (e.g., parsimony, logical coherence), and convincing grounding in the evidence are the key criteria for evaluating this type of research.
This article will emphasize the status and relevance of narrative research in the study of families in business and family business strategy. It argues that narratives can provide a better understanding of the intricate connections between family and business and across family generations in business. Narratives generate knowledge by helping to shape a collective identity and as a form of intergenerational communication. By focusing on narratives as a phenomenological inquiry, we argue that interviews allow researchers to engage often in emotionally charged and intimate conversations with individuals that want to talk about experiences as members of a family business. This paper will discuss the usefulness of narrative approaches for family business strategy research, develop a catalogue of research questions for exploration, highlight challenges and offer solutions to deal with them when using narrative methods in family business research. This paper argues that while several challenges may be encountered, narratives allow researchers to delve into the intricate lives of members of a family in business.
This chapter concentrates on the ethical aspects of biographical interviewing and analysis. It reflects on the experience of the author as a researcher, as she explores some ethical issues, heightened in the face of the unanticipated political responses. The ethical aspects of biographical interviewing discussed in this chapter is concerned mainly with the stages during which the material is collected and subjected to detailed structural analysis. The chapter also considers the problem of collective work on narrative interviews.
This editorial summarises the advantages for historians and family business researchers working together. It provides a brief introduction to the papers in this special issue of Business History.
For historians, the contact with family business scholars provides a
more rigorous approach towards theoretical and analytical frameworks. Better knowledge of theoretical debates will
strengthen and bring better arguments to historical analysis, which in turn will also increase its appeal outside the boundaries of the discipline itself.
The influence of historical research for family business researchers highlights the relevance of path dependency, the realistic variety of life, and the fascinating world of sources. Historical analysis reminds us that the current situation contains all the past, and that history may not enable us to predict the future, but it is extremely useful for understanding the present. Historical sensibility avoids excessive simplification and sensitises the researcher to the concept of multicausality and contextualisation.
As editors, we believe that this special issue genuinely opens up new and varied avenues for research.
From a narrative perspective, organizations' identities are discursive (linguistic) constructs constituted by the multiple identity‐relevant narratives that their participants author about them, and which feature, for example, in documents, conversations and electronic media. By defining collective identities as the totality
of such narratives I draw attention to their complex, and often fragmented and heterogeneous nature. My approach contrasts with much of the theorizing in this field which has tended to homogenize collective identities by emphasizing what is common
or shared, failed to capture the interplay between different communities within organizations, and produced bland, undifferentiated empirical research. In particular, the theoretical framework that I outline focuses attention on the importance of reflexivity, voice, plurivocity, temporality , and fictionality to an understanding of collective identities as locales for competing hegemonic claims. In combination, these notions form a unique conceptual model for theorizing and researching collective identities. This said, a narrative approach also has its limitations, and is proposed as an additional, not exclusive, interpretive lens.
Purpose
This paper seeks to shed light on how core values are successfully transmitted in family businesses via narratives.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative‐interpretive approach is used. Data were collected through in‐depth interviews made to 17 family members from three family businesses of different ages, sizes, industries, and generations in control. The richness of these interviews, besides its depth and length, emerges from the complete picture formed by the comparison of the stories told by different generations.
Findings
Results suggest that narratives are a powerful device for transmitting values through generations. By telling stories, family businesses are able to build identity and shared meanings which led to successful performance in terms of revenues, reputation, shared identity, and continuity of the family business history.
Research limitations/implications
This paper is exploratory. Further studies focusing on failure in transmitting values could enhance and expand emerging results. Deepening on values transmission may be a key research opportunity for general conceptualization.
Originality/value
The paper raises interesting issues for the family business literature within the context of values, an important yet understudied topic in the field. It also contributes to narrative theory by highlighting the usefulness of narratives as a vehicle for values transmission.
Family firms have long been a prominent feature of the organizational landscape and researchers have found some variations of this organizational form to be more resilient than others. The articles and commentaries in this special issue address some of the bases of this resilience including arranged marriages as a management succession strategy, long‐term orientation and multitemporal perspectives, knowledge structures and opportunity identification, and social capital and social exchange. This introduction to the eighth special issue on “theories of family enterprise” discusses the contributions made by the articles and commentaries to our understanding about the resilience of family firms.
This article presents an explanatory model for transfer of family businesses to following generations. Our research using 10 case studies shows that transfer of family businesses is a lifelong, continuous process, in which the family must address and foster the soft elements of the transfer process: enterpreneurship, freedom, values, outside experience, upbringing, and education. Furthermore, a business family can develop into a family dynasty only when it embraces sound governance as a fundamental principle; that is, the individual family member belongs to the family, which belongs to the business.
Most family-owned businesses struggle to survive beyond a single generation. Strategic planning—for both business and family—can help to strengthen the family enterprise and extend its lifespan.
Our paper contributes to the overarching question: "How does the family contribute to firm success?" We add to the nomological net of the familiness construct, by reaching beyond the components of involvement and the essence approach and by introducing organizational identity as a third dimension of familiness. As such, we investigate which families are most likely to build familiness. Specifically, the organizational identity dimension of familiness reflects how the family defines and views the firm, which can facilitate performance advantages through leveraging familiness both internally and externally. Lastly, we discuss how the combinations of components of involvement, essence and identity dimensions of familiness interact and explain why and how some families are a key resource to their firms while others add little value to their organizations.
Anyone involved in entrepreneurial learning, teaching and research will be aware of the power of a good story about business venturing. The continuous supply of personal stories and accounts of business venturing in bookshops, airport lounges, the business press, television dramas or documentary programmes is evidence of the popular readership of entrepreneurial topics sometimes inspiring people to ‘have a go’ for themselves. But narrative accounts are often maligned in entrepreneurship studies for their anecdotal character and inability to say anything significant beyond the person telling their personal story. In this article, the benefits of a narrative style of inquiry for entrepreneurship studies are considered. This is done with reference to the Marvel Mustang account of business venturing. By relating to narrative and reader response theory, consideration is given to the function that the (Marvel Mustang) text has for the reader and how the reader (and not the text) is the key source of meaning about the practices we associate with entrepreneurship. In taking this emphasis, it is possible to understand the processes that facilitate the ‘stretching away’ of little entrepreneurial stories into transforming relations that go beyond the producer of the story and which ‘pull in’ or connect other people that are unrelated to the story. Narrative analysis helps inquirers to move beyond the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of entrepreneurship and to be able to answer theoretically ‘why’ such processes migrate and stretch across different cultures and contexts.
- B Czarniawska
Czarniawska, B. (2004), Narratives in Social Science Research, Sage, London.
Denkverbote gibt es nicht
- E Jaeggi
- A Faas
- K Mruck
Jaeggi, E., Faas, A. and Mruck, K. (1998), "Denkverbote gibt es nicht", Psychologie und
Gesellschaftskritik, Vols 67/68 No. 2, pp. 141-162.
Enabling Next Generation Legacies: 35 Questions that Next Generation Members in Enterprising Families Ask
- P Jaskiewicz
- S B Rau
Jaskiewicz, P. and Rau, S.B. (2021), Enabling Next Generation Legacies: 35 Questions that Next
Generation Members in Enterprising Families Ask, Family Enterprise Knowledge Hub
Publishing, Ottawa.
Qualitative Content Analysis: A Step-by-step Guide
- P Mayring
Mayring, P. (2021), Qualitative Content Analysis: A Step-by-step Guide, Sage, London.
Perpetuating the Family Business: 50 Lessons Learned from Long Lasting, Successful Families in Business
- J Ward
Ward, J. (2004), Perpetuating the Family Business: 50 Lessons Learned from Long Lasting, Successful
Families in Business, Palgrave McMillan, NY.