A Review of Conflict and Cohesion in Social Relationships in Family Firms

Abstract

The literature on conflict and cohesion in social relationships in family firms has developed rapidly in recent decades. To take stock and provide directions to move this flourishing research area forward, we conduct a systematic review of the literature. We examine the prevailing conceptualizations of conflict and cohesion in social relationships in family firms, depict their drivers and outcomes, highlight their theoretical and empirical underpinnings, and propose an ontological framework to synthesize this large body of research. Drawing on our review, we identify some important research gaps and suggest fruitful directions for future research.

Knowledge Accumulation in Entrepreneurship

“…We start with the articles dealing with social and psychological factors affecting entrepreneurs. Thus, Ahmed et al (2022) review the work on entrepreneurial resilience, stress, and coping while Bettinelli et al (2022) deal with the literature on conflict and cohesion in family firms. The next two articles focus on strategic behaviors of entrepreneurial firms.…”

“…The topics of conflict and cohesion have been studied extensively in the family business literature. However, as Bettinelli et al (2022) note in their review of those literatures, most of the prior work has assumed that conflict is uniformly bad and cohesion is uniformly good. Furthermore, despite some notable exceptions, conflict and cohesion are usually considered separately rather than together.…”

“…To address these matters, and to review and reconcile the literature on conflict and cohesion in family businesses, in this issue Bettinelli et al (2022) examine both conflict and cohesion according to their locus, including occurrences in the family, across generations, in the board or TMT, and in the organization. Their review of 89 articles includes 43 on conflict, 26 on cohesion, and 20 on both topics.…”

“…In selecting the articles to review, Bettinelli et al (2022) specifically exclude those that deal with agency conflicts, identity conflicts, and role conflicts. Thus, further literature reviews that bring those conflicts into view might prove useful, especially in family firms, which have unique agency problems and where family identity and family roles can be important determinants that underlie the emergence of conflict and cohesion.…”

“…In doing so, their article shifts the focus of resilience in entrepreneurship from questions related to whom is resilient or not to questions related to how entrepreneurs may become more resilient , thereby opening new avenues for resilience research. Interestingly, the next article in the special issue (Bettinelli et al, 2022) suggests that some sources of stress (i.e., relational, cognitive, or process conflict) and resilience (e.g., cohesion) may be stronger on the one hand and more effective on the other in a venture setting that involves family governance. Comparisons of family and nonfamily firms in terms of stress, coping, and resilience might therefore be useful.…”