Mindfulness and Next-Generation Members of Family Firms: A Source for Sustainability

Abstract

Family businesses are considered complex organizations where emotional and management challenges need to be faced. This is even more difficult when time of succession arrives and the new members are expected to engage with the business. In this study, a total of 204 university students were asked about their present and future situation regarding the family business. Mindfulness levels were also evaluated using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale. There were no significant mindfulness level differences between students who pertained to a family business and those who did not. In the first group, however, those students who were sure about their future in the family business, and had more motivation about it, obtained higher scores on the mindfulness scale as well as being more satisfied with their social relationships. It could be concluded that certainty and motivation about their future in a family business of young family business members correlates with higher mindfulness levels and social well-being.

The Survival of Family Farms: Socioemotional Wealth (SEW) and Factors Affecting Intention to Continue the Business

“…Increasing attention to economic, social, psychological, and emotional aspects of FFs' successors is capital for the present and future of family farming. This idea goes in line with the findings shown by Arzubiaga et al [59], who specifically highlighted the importance of taking care of the socio-emotional aspects of new successors when facing and designing succession processes.…”

The Role of Mindfulness in Business Administration (B.A.) University Students’ Career Prospects and Concerns about the Future

“…The main findings suggest that mindfulness did not influence future professional and personal concerns regardless of whether individuals belonged to a family business or whether they were willing to pursue further education. These results agree with recent findings described by Arzubiaga et al [16], where no differences in mindfulness levels emerged between members and non-members of family businesses. Although some findings argue about the theoretical effects of mindfulness on family business [32], there is a paucity of research measuring mindfulness levels on real family businesses.…”

“…Mindfulness may be effective in regulating emotions among businesses students in the face of business-degree uncertainty related to labor and self-employment prospects. Moreover, the condition of a being member of an FB or not, does not affect mindfulness levels in the same vein of previous studies [16]. Regarding prospect B.A.…”

“…Family firms have been recognized as complex entities where family dimensions and business and commercial logic need to be fit in a single organization [31]. The family and the business subsystems have been represented as two not-aligned social systems that represent emotional and business scenarios, respectively [16,32].…”

“…Mindfulness is defined as "a receptive attention to and awareness of present events and experience" [5] (p. 212). In addition to this, the effects that mindfulness plays in organizational and business settings have been considered using samples of employees and principals [6,7,[10][11][12][13][14], while the topic has been short explored in entrepreneurship [9] and in Family Business [15,16]. In this vein, Van Gelderen et al [9] (p. 490) state that "mindfulness is a relevant concept in the context of entrepreneurship" and Arzubiaga et al [16] sustain that mindfulness levels in potential successors' of family business offer relevant and insightful managerial implications for firm's future.…”