The “open family firm”: openness as boundary work in family enterprises

Abstract

“Openness” has become an established norm in the contemporary business environment. However, despite the crucial importance of boundaries and boundary work in organization and management theory, openness—as opening up boundaries of family firms and entrepreneurial families in collaborating with external actors—has received only nascent attention in the family business domain. We introduce the notion of openness in the family business field. Drawing on the organizational boundary and family business literatures, we develop a conceptual framework of family firm openness as boundary work and examine and discuss the drivers, mechanisms, and consequences of openness in family enterprises. Then, drawing on this framework, we set out an agenda for future research that will contribute to a better understanding of openness, boundaries, and boundary work in family firms and entrepreneurial families. We conclude by discussing some contemporary examples of research on the “open family firm.”

Innovation and Family Business in the Digital Age: A Systematic Literature Review

“…At the academic level, we find a fundamental opportunity that would be the inclusion of FB within economic theory for research in universities. (Johansson et al, 2020), sustained by the human resources of the MZ generation (Kim & Kim, 2022); however, the operational or the academic is insufficient in the digital age and, as real opportunities, there is the creation of ecosystems for co-creation of value, collaborative agreements, open FBs and the linking of family value and business value (Randerson & Estrada-Robles, 2023;Csákné Filep et al, 2023;Lambrechts et al, 2023;De Groote et al, 2023).…”

Networks, ownership and productivity does firm age play a moderating role?

“…Regarding external collaboration, its effect on FF performance has been recently investigated by referring to the “open family firm” approach (Lambrechts et al ., 2022). Opening up organizational boundaries in collaborating with external actors is a complicated undertaking for FFs and non-FFs alike since it fundamentally alters what organizations are, how they function, how they interact with others and how they maintain value across generations.…”

“…Although the theorizing of openness in family enterprises is still in its infancy (Lambrechts et al ., 2022), certain studies have examined how trust and contract completeness influence mutual knowledge creation in alliances (Bouncken et al ., 2020) and how collaboration and open innovation act as ways to overcome in-house resource constraints or to combine strengths to form new groups (Feranita et al ., 2017). This new approach addresses the caveat of prior studies on the family–performance nexus because it relaxes the assumption of homogeneity within FFs.…”