Opportunity recognition in family entrepreneurship: voluntaristic and deterministic orientations of individual cognitions

Pellegrini

Xue

et al. 2019

JFBM

Self Cite

Purpose Strategic change is integral to the survival and development of firms. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of environmental uncertainty on a firm’s strategic change and further demonstrates the moderating role of political connection and family ownership on the relationship between environmental uncertainty and a firm’s strategic change. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses the population sample of Chinese firms listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and the Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2008 to 2014 and quantitatively tests hypotheses through correlation analysis, regression analysis and other methods. Findings Environmental uncertainty has a positive effect on the degree of strategic changes made. Political connection and family ownership negatively moderate the impact of the two dimensions of environmental uncertainty (environmental dynamism and environmental munificence) on strategic changes. Originality/value Conclusions enrich the research of other studies on firms’ strategic changes. From an open systems perspective, this paper reveals the influences of external environmental factors on firms’ strategic changes. In addition to this, in analyzing the ways in which environmental uncertainty affects a firm’s strategic change, the research expands the application scope of information processing theory and resource-based view. This paper also provides significant practical observations on firms’ strategic decision making in this area.

Section: Theory and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environment uncertainty and a firm’s strategic change the moderating role of political connection and family ownership

Pellegrini

Xue

et al. 2019

JFBM

Self Cite

“…Every effort intended to curb intuition to privilege a linear and analytical thinking approach is likely to hamper the effectiveness of the entrepreneurial decision making process, be it implemented by an individual agent or by a group (Wang et al, 2020). Intuition and rationality should be carefully balanced to synergistically benefit from their advantages and to minimize backlash on the effectiveness of entrepreneurial choices produced by a one-sided, partial approach to decision making (Organ & O'Flaherty, 2016).…”

Section: Key Referencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A round of dancing and then one more: embedding intuition in the ballet of entrepreneurial decision making

et al. 2021

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The dance metaphor allows us to figuratively depict entrepreneurial decision making processes. Being conventionally conceived of as a sequence of purposeful behaviors rooted in a rational cognition process, entrepreneurial decision making can be featured as a ‘ballet’. This interpretation puts in the background the improvisational nature of decision making, which revokes ‘lindy hop’ as a dance style. The article intends to illuminate the role of intuition, highlighting its overlap with rationality in the entrepreneurial decision making dance. For this purpose, a bibliometric analysis followed by an interpretive literature review advances a comprehensive report of 66 peer-reviewed journal articles published from 1995 to 2019, constructing evidence on the nature of entrepreneurial decision making and on the interplay between intuition and rationality. Literature is categorized in five clusters, which are reciprocally intertwined. Firstly, intuition is unconsciously used as a strategy to deal with the uncertainty that inherently affects entrepreneurial ventures. Secondly, intuition is rooted in the entrepreneurs’ impulsivity, that echoes the role of emotions in decision making. Thirdly, the merge of rationality and intuition improves the entrepreneurs’ ability to keep up with the erratic rhythm of the decision making dance. Fourthly, the mix of intuition and rationality serves as a catalyst of entrepreneurs’ ability to thrive in complex and unpredictable environments. Fifthly, intuition generates drawbacks on entrepreneurs’ meta-cognitive knowledge, which should be carefully recognized. Embracing the dance metaphor, intuition turns out to be crucial to make entrepreneurs able to fill in the gap between rationality and uncertainty.

“…However, the entrepreneur's value and entrepreneurial vision can only be conformed to when it is understood, accepted and committed by other family members (Frank et al, 2017;Jaskiewicz et al, 2015). Emergent studies have uncovered the heterogeneity of family members in terms of value, goals and interests (Caputo et al, 2018;Di Toma and Montanari, 2017), and so further study has been called for regarding the ways in which to encourage the conformity of family members (Gartner et al, 1994;Frank et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2020). Accordingly, this article uses the family social capital (FSC) theory to study family relations in family firms.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Shared knowledge and collective cognitive maps envision a homogenous entrepreneurial process (Lumpkin et al, 2011). By integrating individual family members' knowledge, experiences and information, family members develop a holistic collective cognitive map and a common acknowledgement of their role within the entrepreneurial process (Frank et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2020). The awareness of mutual behavioural expectations further aligns family members with a consistent value system in supporting entrepreneurial decision-making (Chirico and Salvato, 2016).…”

Section: Development Of Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Entrepreneurial decision-making and family social capital

Flamini

et al. 2020

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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to adopt a collective perspective in the study of entrepreneurial decision-making processes and empirically analyse the ways in which social relationships between family members can shape their collective entrepreneurial decision-making behaviour (ED).Design/methodology/approachThis paper considers the family social capital (FSC) in inducing overall conformity to the focal family member's decision to exploit an opportunity. In terms of the seminal construct of social capital, the authors propose three FSC dimensions that can be used to induce conformity: structural, relational and cognitive dimensions. Then, the authors design questionnaires to collect data pertaining to the relationships between the family members' ED and the FSC. Finally, the authors collect 152 valid questionnaires from Chinese family firms.FindingsThe data analysis consists of two parts. The first section of this paper analyses conformity by testing the discriminant validity of models. Regression analysis is then used to test the relationship between family members' ED and the FSC. Significant relationships between the cognitive dimension of FSC and the entrepreneur's decision-making are found.Originality/valueThe research contributes towards academic literature concerning both entrepreneurship and social capital. On the one hand, this paper is one of the rare pieces of entrepreneurial research that responds to the call for the study of entrepreneurship from a collective perspective. On the other hand, our study quantitatively tests the impact of FSC at a multidimensional level. It provides conclusions regarding the social influence of other family members and provides insights into social capital by studying entrepreneurship from a social/community perspective.