Behavioral Integration as a Relational Governance Mechanism in Family Firms—The Moderating Role of Family Involvement in Management

In this paper we introduce behavioral integration, a construct established in top management team (TMT) research, into the family firm field. TMT research argues that behavioral integration has a positive performance effect as it fosters commitment to the task at hand, joint goals, and mutual trust among TMT members. Because of these specific characteristics, we argue that behavioral integration might act as a relational governance mechanism that positively influences family firm performance. Based on research on family involvement in management, we posit that this positive performance effect of behavioral integration as a relational governance mechanism is particularly pronounced in family firms with a high degree of family involvement in management.     

Trying to complain: the impact of self‐referencing on complaining intentions

This paper introduces the Theory of Trying to complaining behaviour, and argues that complaining intentions can be explained by the model. Moreover, we model propensity to self‐reference (SR) as a moderating variable, and suggest that the effects of the causes to complaining intentions depend on the SR‐level held by consumers. A sample of undergraduate business students participated in the study, where the goal was to get a better understanding of complaining intentions. Our study provides new and additional insights in the drivers of complaining by also taking dispositional personality differences into consideration. The results demonstrate that boundary conditions for main‐effect models like the theory of trying can be fruitfully addressed through the notion of individual differences. The research documented that customers' propensity to complain systematically differed as a function of their level of self‐referencing. This is both good and bad news to managers. The good news is that a proportion of the customers rely less on their previous experiences in the complaining domain when they form intentions to complain. The bad news is that some others do. The obstacle is that managers cannot tell by the look if they are talking to an individual with high or low propensity to self‐reference. As the customer base contains both types case could be taken in designing marketing communication campaigns that target the groups differently.     

The Narrow and Broad Approaches to Evolutionary Modeling in Economics

Some models in evolutionary economics rely on direct analogies to genetic evolution, assuming a population of firms with routines, technologies, and strategies on which forces of diversity generation and selection act. This narrow conception can build upon previous findings from evolutionary biology. Broader concepts of evolution allow many or just one adaptive entity, instead of necessarily requiring a population. Thus, an institution or a society can also be understood as an evolutionary entity. Both the narrow and broad approaches have been extensively used in the literature, albeit in different literature traditions. I provide an overview of the conception and development of both approaches to evolutionary modeling, and argue that a generalization is needed to realize the full potential of evolutionary modeling.     

II. Allgemeine und angewandte statistik

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