Innovativeness in family firms: a family influence perspective

Abstract

Family firms, Family influence, Innovation, Family firm performance, C12, L26, L25,

Tweaking the entrepreneurial orientation–performance relationship in family firms: the effect of control mechanisms and family-related goals

“…Their business behavior is influenced by the goals to protect the longevity of the family firm ) and the will to pass on the firm to the next generation for their own and the family's interest (Berrone et al 2012). In comparison to nonfamily firms, studies demonstrate that family firms show similar attitudes for other EO dimensions and their positive effect on financial performance, with regards to Innovativeness (Kellermanns et al 2012a;Bergfeld and Weber 2011;Kraus et al 2012b), Proactiveness (De Massis et al 2014;Zellweger and Sieger 2012;Nordqvist et al 2008) and Autonomy (Gómez-Mejía et al 2007;Habbershon and Pistrui 2002). However, research findings also indicate that EO dimensions in family firms might have to be refined, to external and internal components of Innovativeness and Autonomy (Nordqvist et al 2008;Zellweger and Sieger 2012), to different components or definitions of Risk-Taking (Gómez-Mejía et al 2007;Zellweger and Sieger 2012;Zahra 2005), with regards to the applicability of Competitive Aggressiveness (Nordqvist and Melin 2010;Lumpkin et al 2010;Kallmuenzer and Peters 2017) or depending on the age/generational context for Proactiveness (De Massis et al 2014;Martin and Lumpkin 2003).…”

“…Authors predominantly argue that Innovativeness is an important driver also for financial performance of family firms, especially when the family is strongly involved (Bergfeld and Weber 2011; Kellermanns et al 2012a). Proactiveness fosters financial performance ), but is depending on the age of the firm (De Massis et al 2014) and only occurs during selected moves (Martin and Lumpkin 2003).…”

“…Innovativeness refers to engaging in and supporting new ideas. Thus, innovative companies are able to develop new products and processes, which they can turn into increased performance (Kellermanns et al 2012a;Bergfeld and Weber 2011). Proactiveness helps companies to anticipate market needs and to reap benefits from being first in the market (De Massis et al 2014;Nordqvist and Melin 2010).…”

“…Thus, we implemented dummy variables for the industries, in order to control for industry specific performance effects (Schepers et al 2014). Prior research also indicated potential influences of firms size on company outcomes (Kellermanns et al 2012a;Beck et al 2011). We therefore controlled for the number of employees as proxy for firm size.…”

Disentangling antecedents and performance effects of family SME innovation: A knowledge-based perspective

“…Conceptually, family firm definitions can be categorized into the components-of-involvement approach, where the involvement of a family is sufficient to constitute a family business, and the essence approach, where family involvement is only a necessary condition, and its intention and vision to potentially sustain across generations ultimately constitutes a family firm (Chrisman et al 2005;Habbershon and Williams 1999;Chua et al 1999). This paper follows the essence approach and builds on contributions by Astrachan et al (2002) and Kellermanns et al (2012), in that it considers various degrees of family influence on the business. Specifically, two central aspects of family influence are relevant to be considered a family firm: family control over the firm and family involvement in the management of the firm.…”