We apply attribution theory to examine how family ownership status shapes consumer attitudes toward companies after negative corporate social responsibility incidents, focusing on incident controllability. Two longitudinal experiments reveal that, when controllability is unknown, consumers infer lower controllability for family firms and thus hold more favorable attitudes toward them than non-family firms. However, when controllability is known, low-controllability incidents lead to similar attitudes across firm types, whereas high-controllability incidents reverse the effect, resulting in more negative attitudes toward family firms than non-family firms. These findings challenge the prevailing assumption that family firms consistently benefit from their reputation and inform stakeholder communication strategies.

We bridge the gap between the economic and sociological approaches to institutional theory and contribute to the literature on necessity entrepreneurship by examining institutional trust as the antecedent of entrepreneurial orientation and the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty, munificence, and entrepreneurs’ political affiliation in sub-Saharan Africa. Regression analysis of survey data collected from rural farm entrepreneurs in Angola, Africa, shows that the relationship between institutional trust and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) becomes significant with the moderation of environmental munificence, uncertainty, and political affiliation. Our findings have practical implications for governments and entrepreneurs in necessity-driven contexts.

This study investigates conflict markers that occur during online communication in business families. Our findings identified eleven different markers that point to escalating conflict. We not only confirmed the applicability of Gottman’s conflict markers (1994) to the business family realm, we also identified unique markers in the realm of digital communication as well as specific markers in the context of business families. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

Although formal education is widely viewed as an important determinant of individual welfare, evidence on its relationship with entrepreneurs’ subjective well-being (SWB) remains mixed. Drawing on institutional theory, we examine how two types of country-level institutional supports- entrepreneurial education support and entrepreneurial funding support-influence the well-being returns associated with education-based human capital. Using multilevel data from 4,412 entrepreneurs across 20 countries and integrating the latest wave of the World Values Survey with institutional indicators from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and the World Bank, we find that these institutional supports moderate the formal education – SWB relationship in opposite ways. Specifically, entrepreneurial funding support makes formal education—SWB more positive, whereas entrepreneurial education support makes it more negative, such that highly educated entrepreneurs report lower SWB in countries with higher entrepreneurial education support. These findings underscore the functional heterogeneity of institutional support and clarify why prior evidence on the formal educationona – well-being nexus among entrepreneurs has been inconsistent.

We draw from the Circumplex Model in family science to develop the Business-Owning Family Adaptability and Cohesion (BOFAC) scale to measure interpersonal family dynamics in family businesses. The BOFAC scale consists of two sub-scales: cohesion (7 items) and adaptability (8 items). We followed accepted scale development procedures, including conceptualization, item generation (based on 14 interviews with family business stakeholders), model specification (using a sample of 245 family business stakeholders), evaluation and refinement, and validation, relying on a sample of 144 family business CEOs and other constituents. Our findings show high reliability and validity. Compared to other existing family dynamics scales, BOFAC is directly tied to the family business context; it is short, easy to administer (self-report), and freely available to family business scholars (non-copyrighted).

When asked by the editors to contribute a chapter to their book on how I position family business research in targeting different types of journals, I thought that this would be a simple task. Codifying intangible knowledge, however, is easier said than done. Thus, I searched my memory to find where this intangible knowledge comes from and how I have established my publication pattern.

The Request for Proposal (RFP) process, which is used extensively by industry and all levels of government for the procurement of products and services, is generated independently of later project execution. This paper examines the impact of RFP project requirements risk on project performance. Furthermore, utilizing Transactive Memory Systems (TMS) theory, we identify "proposal overlap" between the RFP team and the final project execution team as a key moderator of this relationship. The results support our hypotheses that proposal overlap mitigates the impact of requirements risk on project performance. We discuss implications for project management and develop future research avenues.

The purpose of this article is to introduce the second special issue on knowledge accumulation in entrepreneurship published in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice . Based on the idea that entrepreneurship is fundamentally about the pursuit of opportunity in the presence of uncertainty, the special issue first summarizes and discusses four articles that deal with who pursues opportunities and the types of opportunities pursued (nascent entrepreneurship; user entrepreneurship; returnee entrepreneurship; destructive entrepreneurship), and then summarizes and discusses four articles that deal with the nature of uncertainty and methods entrepreneurs use to cope with uncertainty (Knightian uncertainty; entrepreneurial metacognition; entrepreneurial experimentation; network agency).

Family firm owners who were once employed by publicly owned companies are likely left with the imprint of the public economy. This study argues that this imprint is an essential factor influencing family firm owners’ attitude toward external equity, leading to lower foreign shares. Using a fixed-effect panel dataset from China, we found that family firm owners with public economy career experience tend to avoid foreign equity infusion. Furthermore, this relationship is more pronounced for firms that receive more government subsidies and diminishes with higher family ownership. We propose that family firm owners’ early career experience affects their attitude toward foreign equity and suggest that historical factors impact owners’ preference regarding external equity.

This study examines whether high-tech ventures would be better at product innovation if their top management team (TMT) members had higher levels of strategic consensus at founding, and, if so, how it happens. Taking the entrepreneurial process model (EPM) as our research lens, we propose that TMT strategic consensus can streamline opportunity recognition, leading to faster TMT decision-making; higher TMT decision speed then facilitates opportunity exploitation in which product innovation is realized. We also suggest that this indirect influence is contextually sensitive; that is, external conditions (specifically, environmental competitiveness) negatively moderate the relationship between strategic consensus and decision speed, and internal conditions (specifically, structural specialization among TMT members) positively moderate the relationship between decision speed and product innovation. Drawing on a sample of 92 Chinese high-tech ventures and using a lagged, multiple-respondent design, we found support for these arguments.

Family firms often face challenges in recruiting and attracting employees. Integrating signaling theory with the theory of reasoned action, we develop a parallel mediation model to predict how signaling the family firm brand in recruitment materials influences applicant attraction. The results of our experiment indicate that job seekers have opposing category-based beliefs about family firms: they perceive family firms to be more authentic and more innovative, but with inferior HR systems, as compared to nonfamily firms. Furthermore, we find that these perceptions influence applicant attraction in different and unexpected ways. We discuss implications for research and practice and recommend promising avenues for future inquiry.

This study explores the effect of a firm's entrepreneurial orientation on the individual resilience of small business owners and how this relationship is moderated by firm-level ambidexterity. We build on social cognitive theory to discuss whether and how the three dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation that is, innovativeness, proactivity, and risk-taking) interact with the two components of ambidexterity (that is, exploration and exploitation) to jointly influence the resilience of small business owners. Our findings indicate that a risk-taking orientation is positively related to resilience and that an innovativeness orientation causes resilience to suffer when an exploitative approach is pursued. For firms with a proactivity orientation, however, exploitation has a positive moderating effect. Our study adds to the literature by linking firm-level determinants and individual-level outcomes in the special context of small businesses.

JEL Classification: L20; M10; M12; M50

We investigate the differential effect of time in terms of generation in control of the firm's management on family firm performance to address the call in the literature for a more nuanced treatment of family firms and their performance differences. By drawing on the mixed-gamble logic of the behavioral agency model, our work suggests that the family's socio-emotional wealth (SEW) varies across generations, resulting in complex performance relationships. We theorize and empirically find that earlier-generation family firms protect current SEW and perform increasingly worse while later-generation firms maximize prospective financial wealth and perform increasingly better. Additionally, we argue that high family control dispersion mitigates the negative effect on performance of earlier generations in control and increases the positive effect of later generations in control. Important theoretical and practical contributions emerge from this study.

Drawing from prospect theory, we use an experimental study design to explore how and why reference points of managers of family and nonfamily firms differ. We contribute to research on the role of economic theories for family businesses by elaborating on decision-making mechanisms in the context of family firms. Furthermore, we investigate whether family and nonfamily managers within family firms vary in their investment decisions. Our study demonstrates the importance of price volatility as a determinant of reference points and shows how the same type of information can lead to different reference points based on whether the manager is from a family or nonfamily firm.

This chapter describes the methodological approach of latent profile analysis (LPA). LPA can be used to generate homogenous groups out of a sample (generally 250 or more) utilizing three or more variables and to capture complexities not easily interpreted using other methodological applications. After providing a general overview, we show how applying LPA to various family firm research questions can generate insight beyond traditional methods. We stress LPA as a useful tool in the family firm research arsenal, particularly as a contributor to the growing research stream of family firm heterogeneity. A sample syntax for MPlus is provided.