The spirit of family business: A comparative analysis of Anglo, Germanic and Nordic nations

Abstract

Using GLOBE classification and findings, this paper compares the family characteristics and work cultures of family businesses in Anglo, Germanic, and Nordic cultures. Results indicate differing patterns in terms of the involvement of the family in the family business and other key organizational dimensions. While all three regions share their weak family orientation, the Nordic and Germanic regions share stronger future orientation and uncertainty avoidance. The Anglo and Germanic regions share stronger performance orientation and the Nordic region stands out for its low power distance and low assertiveness. Overall, the characteristics of family businesses in the three regions may be associated with the distinctive regional cultures suggesting support for the presence of culturally implicit theories in the family business characteristics.

Family business and regional development—A theoretical model of regional familiness

“…These differences are based on not only uneven spatial family firm distribution (Gupta, Levenburg, Moore, Motwani, & Schwarz, 2011) but also uneven spatial regional economic growth and development, showing that the relationship between family businesses and regional development is not simple. To enhance our understanding of the relationship between family businesses and regional development, I next theoretically determine the extent to which the specificities of family businesses' behavior interact with endogenous and exogenous factors and regional processes through proximity dimensions affecting regional development (Fig.…”

“…For instance, the success and failure of two Swedish furniture locations (Tirbo and Virserum) described by Rafiqui (2010) were due to the interaction of institutional and non-institutional factors, such as those stemming from family-owned firms. Formal and informal institutional proximity interact in shaping ownership and governance structures (for a comparison of historical evolution between Italian and Swedish family firms, see Colli & Larsson, 2013), family firms' management practices (Gupta et al, 2011) that affect information exchange, interactive learning (Boschma & Frenken, 2010), knowledge spillover (Stimson, 2014b), and firm performance (Miller et al, 2009). For instance, in some contexts, family firms' social capital is a means to fill voids left by institutions and to address exogenous institutional factors such as political factors.…”

Family enrichment and women entrepreneurial success: the mediating effect of family interference

“…The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) or institutional equivalent by both researchers involved in the study that insures ethical standards of conducting research. This country is typically assigned to the Germanic cluster of countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland (Gupta et al 2011;House et al 2004). In the Germanic cultures, the society itself is enmeshed in order, structure, and rules, and operates like a welloiled machine (Gupta and Hanges 2004;Gupta et al 2011).…”

Family business and regional science: “Bridging the gap”

“…Additionally, it is possible to move this line of research forward by linking regional economic and family business studies to the field of economic geography. This is because traditional economic geography, at least before its relational turn, has failed to understand what makes the firm "behave and perform the way it does when competing in the market" (Maskell, 2001, p. 340 ---insert figure 3 around here ---Even though there is an incipient movement to consider not only internal factors (e.g., family involvement dimensions) but also external factors (e.g., cultural dimensions as explicated by Gupta, Levenburg, Moore, Motwani, & Schwarz, 2011), we suggest that dimensions coming from regional science could enable researchers to better interpret the family firm phenomenon under certain kinds of regional economic and social contexts. For instance, how do different types of clusters (for more details about different types of clusters see Markusen, 1996) with varying internal organizational and socio-economic relational activities affect family firm behavior and performance?…”