Construct validity continues to pose challenges in the organizational sciences. To capture difficult-to-measure constructs of interest, researchers have often relied on content analysis. One content analysis technique, computer-aided text analysis (CATA), is particularly attractive because of the ability to process large samples with high speeds and reliabilities. Unfortunately, inconsistent guidance exists to guide researchers through the use of this tool in a manner compatible with accepted methods used to validate constructs in a rigorous manner. The authors review research using content analysis to examine the extent to which such studies integrate methods for assessing content, external, discriminant, and predictive validity. To provide direction for organizational researchers interested in using CATA to measure theoretically based constructs relevant to the management field, they suggest a number of possible procedures to enhance construct validity. They illustrate these procedures using the construct of entrepreneurial orientation.

A long-term orientation (LTO) is often associated with family firms, but the LTO construct is underdeveloped. This paper sets forth a framework for studying LTO in family firms including developing three dimensions-futurity, continuity, and perseverance. It identifies LTO as a higher-order heuristic that, in matters of intertemporal choice, provides a dominant logic for decisions and actions. Intertemporal choice refers to decisions with payoffs or outcomes that play out over time. Three mechanisms affecting intertemporal choices are identifiedrepresentation, self-control, and anticipation. LTO and intertemporal choice are further examined and discussed in the context of family firms.

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There is considerable disagreement about whether family firm characteristics hinder or support entrepreneurial activities. This article highlights the existence of an entrepreneurial orientation in family firms, and it examines differences between family and nonfamily firms on the entrepreneurial orientation dimensions of autonomy, competitive aggressiveness, innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk taking, using content analysis of shareholder letters from S&P 500 firms. As such, family firms exhibit language consistent with an entrepreneurial orientation for all dimensions but use less language than that of nonfamily firms in relation to autonomy, proactiveness, and risk taking.