Conflict management in family businesses

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this study is to map the intellectual structure of the field of conflict management and the field of family business to the investigation of conflicts in family firms, with the aim of contributing to the further integration of knowledge between the two fields.Design/methodology/approach -Family conflicts and work-family balance issues also received a lot of attention, yet studies in conflict management still seem to overlook a thorough investigation of conflict in family businesses. Conflict is a major aspect of family businesses, which differs highly from non-family businesses, and offers an important research avenue for conflict management scholars to contribute to the investigation of major characteristics of organisations that constitute a large part of the value created in the world.Findings -The results of a bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review show that studies concerning conflict in family business aggregate around three clusters: organisational conflicts; firm growth and conflicts; and family control, performance and conflicts. An interpretative framework is also developed to interpret how antecedents, conflicts and growth dynamics in family business influence performances. Findings show how family conflicts and work-family balance issues received a lot of attention, yet studies in conflict management still seem to miss a thorough investigation of conflict in family businesses.Originality/value -This paper contributes to the field of conflict management and family business by providing a systematic analysis of knowledge and family firms. This paper can be a starting point for researchers interested in understanding how conflicts affect family businesses.

Sustainability and financial performance of small and medium sized enterprises: A bibliometric and systematic literature review

“…For journals, the average number of citations was 20, whereas the median was 6 and the mode 0. These numbers are consistent with niches of studies in management (Caputo, 2013;Caputo et al, 2018) and exhibit how, despite such new research, it is producing a fairly good impact.…”

“…To provide an accurate analysis of sustainability and financial performance of SMEs, following the most recent developments in bibliographic research (e.g., Caputo, Marzi, Pellegrini, & Rialti, 2018; López-Fernández, Serrano-Bedia, & Pérez-Pérez, 2016), a systematic literature review supported by the bibliometric analysis based on the visualization of similarities technique (van Eck & Waltman, 2010; van Eck, Waltman, van den Berg, & Kaymak, 2006) was utilized.…”

“…The assumption is that the degree of overlap of references among two articles indicates similarity in the topic investigated (Vogel & Güttel, 2013). Because the number of cited references in an article does not change over time, bibliographic coupling, compared with other bibliometric tools, is not influenced when the analysis is performed; therefore, it is considered to be particularly useful when adopted to inform systematic literature reviews (e.g., Caputo et al, 2018). The VOSviewer tool allows results from a co-occurrence matrix to be visualized, where co-occurrences emanate from the presence, frequency, and proximity of similar pairs of cited references in the data (van Eck & Waltman, 2014).…”

Tracing the Roots of Constructive Conflict Management in Family Firms

“…Second, it expands the familiness framework by developing its connections with constructive conflict in family firms. Third, it contributes to the literature on conflict management and family business, constructing a bridge between both of these equally relevant fields (Caputo et al, 2018). Fourth, it brings insights for further research on how constructive conflict is rooted in family firms.…”

“…Thus, current evidence is still insufficient to understand how family firms may constructively manage their conflicts (Deutsch, 2011a(Deutsch, , 2011bTjosvold, Wong, & Feng Chen, 2014). Indeed, the question of how the uniqueness of family firms may affect their willingness to constructively manage their conflicts remains understudied, offering many opportunities for new contributions to the fields of both family firm (Holt, Pearson, Payne, & Sharma, 2018) and conflict management (Caputo, Marzi, Pellegrini, & Rialti, 2018). Given these gaps in the literature, we aimed to propose a framework for understanding how the uniqueness of family firms may influence constructive conflict management.…”