The ability of family firms to identify and respond to changes in their external environments can be a key source of competitive advantage leading to success and survival. Some research, however, has suggested family firms are conservative and often lack the ability to adapt to their changing competitive environments. Using data from 248 family firms, we found a family firm's culture of commitment to the business is positively associated with its strategic flexibility-the ability to pursue new opportunities and respond to threats in the competitive environment. Further, we found stewardship-oriented organizational culture positively moderated the family commitment-strategic flexibility relationship.Changes in the competitive, technological, and global landscapes have challenged family firms to devise new systems and strategies to innovate and retain their market positions. In these dynamic and competitive environments, companies must attain and sustain a high level of strategic flexibility in order to assemble, bundle, and deploy their assets and resources in ways to take advantage of emerging opportunities. As such, firms must develop, execute, and effectively time their new strategies to achieve and maintain their competitive advantages. Even though strategic flexibility is valuable to all firms, it may be particularly important to family firms, which have often been described as conservative and slow to recognize and respond to changes in their environments. Those family firms that are sluggish and inflexible are likely to miss valuable opportunities for profit and growth. The literature, however, has not examined the conditions contributing to family firms' strategic flexibility, making it difficult to appreciate why some family firms are more adaptive to their environments than others.

In this article, we investigate the effect of firm‐level natural‐environment‐related policies on innovation and financial performance in family and nonfamily firms. Our findings demonstrate that family firms are better able to facilitate environmentally friendly firm policies associated with improved firm innovation and greater financial performance more effectively than their nonfamily competitors.

Drawing on the family‐embeddedness perspective on entrepreneurship and the resource‐based‐view of the firm, we investigate how the promotion of family‐based brand identity influences competitive orientation (customer versus product) and firm performance in family businesses. Applying structural equation modeling to survey data collected from leaders of 218 family businesses, we demonstrate that developing a family‐based brand identity positively contributes to firm performance (growth and profitability) indirectly, via a customer‐centric orientation. In contrast, attempts to leverage family‐based brand identity via a product‐centric orientation do not impact firm performance. Our results suggest that family‐based brand identity enhances the family business' ability to persuade customers to make purchasing decisions based on the perceived attributes of the seller. As a result, we contribute to the discussions centered on how to optimize the intricate synergy between family and business.

This paper describes a study that investigates the mediating effects of information technology (IT) on the relationships among product and process innovations and firm performance (measured in multiple profitability and growth rate metrics). Using structural equation modeling on a sample of 397 small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), we find evidence that (1) increases on the strategic emphasis placed on innovation, both product and process, positively impact the prominence managers place on IT; (2) the impact of innovation (both product and process) on performance (both profitability and growth) is primarily indirect, felt via the mechanism of the importance managers place on IT; and (3) an increased emphasis on IT abets managers' perception of their firms' performance, as compared with that observed among peer firms (other SMEs).

This article studies innovation in family firms, filling in some gaps in existent literature. The research addresses the idea of shifting leadership, different mechanisms of facilitating communication, and the importance to the firm of technical progress, linking each to innovation. Shifting leadership is addressed through the longitudinal design. Communication mechanisms are monitored through two constructs: scope of information and timeliness of information. Technical progress is included in an environmental uncertainty factor technoeconomic uncertainty. The findings suggest that linkages between established family firms and innovation may be substantially stronger than currently assumed by many.