Emerging Paths of Family Entrepreneurship Research*

This futuristic commentary reviews family business research since its beginning more than 30 years ago. Prior to 2000, disciplinary roots, professional organizations, and early milestones are identified. More recent books, journals, and special issues are noted, and conceptualizations, theories, and databases are compared and contrasted. Lastly, current and future research paths or directions are identified and discussed, and researchers are challenged to move ahead into new and different research arenas.     

Toward a Typology of Family Firm Corporate Entrepreneurship

Family involvement in business creates idiosyncrasies in firm behavior that promote long‐term, often transgenerational, strategic logics that ostensibly align with the motivations and outcomes of corporate entrepreneurship. Interestingly, extant research provides only minimal insight into the heterogeneous nature of corporate entrepreneurship orientations pursued by family firms. To better understand this heterogeneity, we develop a typology of corporate entrepreneurship in family firms providing a reconciliatory approach to this literary diversity and suggest that the varied corporate entrepreneurship orientations of family firms are impacted by the duality of a family's distinct intention to pursue transgenerational succession and capabilities to acquire external knowledge.     

Build a Firm,Start Another: The Bromleys and Family Firm Entrepreneurship in the Philadelphia Region

Drawing chiefly on the multi-generational strategies of a durable family firm in the Philadelphia textile industry, this article strives to suggest the creative manner in which kin-based managerial teams responded to shifting economic environments in the United States, c. 1850–1940. Central to the Bromleys' success was the spinning off of new firms in different, but related, textile sectors, thereby taking advantage of market opportunities and easing inter-generational successions. Still, key failures of vision in the inter-war era defeated the expansionism of the Bromley clan's most successful section. Two regional case studies of family firms in metalworking and foodstuffs are appended to suggest the range of variation in succession strategies and their results in differing industrial sectors and market environments. As might be expected, a call for more intensive and conceptually refined research is offered at the close.     

Women Entrepreneurs and Family Firm Heterogeneity: Evidence from an Emerging Economy

Family firms add to the economic and social well-being of countries. While research on heterogeneity of family firms is gaining momentum, it has mostly been gender-neutral. The study fills this gap by examining heterogeneity of family firms owned and managed by women, in the context of a developing country—Brazil. The study draws upon the resource-based view of the firm to investigate the relationships between firm performance, family involvement, and financial resources at the start-up phase. An inductive analysis reveals two patterns. First, family firms that are started with the family achieve better performance than firms that are launched without the family and later evolve into a family business. Second, family firms that are funded with women entrepreneur’s own savings achieve worse performance than family firms that are started with borrowed funds. The results are useful for strategic decision making in fostering family businesses headed by women and proactive public policies for future innovation to enhance the success of women entrepreneurs.     

TMT社会网络、公司创业与企业绩效关系研究

拥有大量内外部信息资源的高管团队(TMT),其社会网络不但可以提供公司创业的机会来源,也是企业现在绩效和未来绩效的影响因素。TMT的社会网络只有通过公司创业机制才能转化为企业绩效的价值创造过程。中国背景下的实证研究显示:TMT社会网络、公司创业都与企业绩效正相关,对于企业而言,要高度重视通过管理手段激励整个高管团队的所有成员去构建有效的内外部社会网络;公司创业的价值增值中介作用也得到证实,公司创业发挥着重要的资源整合作用,有价值的TMT内外部社会网络只有充分融入企业的产品或服务创新,以及深层次的战略更新过程中,为企业的价值增值服务,才能转变为企业绩效。     

Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets: New Insights and Directions for Future Research

In recent years, the entrepreneurship and emerging markets research streams have intersected. Emerging markets provide an opportunity to examine entrepreneurship in different contexts and forms. This article discusses the current literature that interconnects both research streams in general, comments on the contributions of the articles published in the special issue on entrepreneurship and emerging markets in particular, and sketches out future avenues for research. These contributions span several theoretical lenses, including institutional theory, internationalization theory, transaction cost economics, and the resource‐based view, as well as multiple geographic regions, including China as the largest emerging economy and other countries in East Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. We weave a discussion of the extant literature and these contributions inside three key themes: Emerging Markets and China's Uniqueness, Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets, and Future Research on Emerging Markets Entrepreneurship. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Mapping Ethics Education in Accounting Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

Journal of Business Ethics - The attention being paid to ethics education in accounting has been increasing, especially after the corporate accounting scandals at the turn of the century. This...     

Family Firm Heterogeneity and Tax Aggressiveness: A Mixed Gamble Approach

Few studies try to understand how the unique preferences of family firms affect tax strategies, and how family firm heterogeneity drives variation in tax activities. Drawing on the mixed gamble approach, this study examines the tax aggressiveness of different types of family firms, considering how various sources of heterogeneity alter the perception of potential gains and losses to socioemotional and financial wealth. Based on a panel dataset of 242 private family firms for the period 2012–2014, this study shows that strong family-owned firms, family firms with a family CFO, family-founder firms, and family-named firms display lower levels of tax aggressiveness. These findings demonstrate that family firm heterogeneity is a crucial factor in the mixed gamble calculus of tax aggressiveness.     

The Effect of Entrepreneurship Orientation on Firm Performance: A Multiple Mediation Model

Scholars have recognized the important role that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) plays in driving firm performance. However, this relationship is not yet well understood and studies have sought to examine various contingencies that might mediate or moderate this relationship. This study investigates the impact of organization behavior variables on the EO – firm performance relationship. The structural model was tested using primary data from 321 South Korean industrial firms. The results show that EO is positively related to firm performance and that adaptive organizational culture and people-centered management have a multiple mediating effect on the relationship between EO and firm performance.     

社区非正规金融活跃度对家庭创业的影响——基于CLDS数据的实证分析

利用中国劳动力动态调查(CLDS) 2012-2016年的微观数据,从非正规金融活动的地域性特征出发,实证检验社区非正规金融活跃度对家庭创业决策与创业规模的影响.结果 表明:社区非正规金融活跃度对家庭创业决策有显著的正向影响,而异质性分析显示,非正规金融活跃度对借贷网络匮乏、处于城镇社区、户主较年轻以及受教育水平较低家庭创业决策的促进作用更显著;社区非正规金融活跃度对家庭创业规模有显著的负向影响.     

家族资源支持类型与家族创业:基于家族义务与创业者素质视角——兼对家族社会资本研究的一个补充

家族资本(人力、财务、社会)是家族创业的重要资源基础,现有文献普遍认为基于信任的家族社会资本是家族人力和财务资本(即家族资源)进入家族创业的唯一路径,这显然将问题简单化.家族的权力结构与情感关系决定了家族成员之间存在着复杂的家族义务.这种家族义务超出了信任或家族社会资本的概念范围并影响着家族成员的行为,同时与创业者创业素质一起决定了家族资源对家族创业的支持类型.这些类型主要包括信任、计算契约、纯粹利他、互惠利他四种.家族资源支持类型的不同还对家族创业成功产生影响.     

Entrepreneurship in the Theory of the Firm

This paper develops micro-economic foundations for a theory of entrepreneurship and growth, focusing on innovation and opportunity as intermediate linkages between the two. Expanding upon points of tangency between Schumpeter and Coase, the paper argues that transactions costs are the glue that holds together entrepreneurial “new combinations.” Technological/organizational complexity of production is defined as the extent to which a technical decision by one unit within the firm affects the productive efficiency of other units. Where decreasing transactions costs tend to pull incumbent organizations apart, the possession of difficult to imitate production practices by the same organizations keeps them together. The dissolution of incumbent firms creates opportunities for entrepreneurs; the prospect of Schumpeterian rents provides the incentive to realize those opportunities.      

The VAT-Evading Firm and VAT Evasion: An Empirical Analysis

It has been claimed that an increase in the ratio of VAT reclaimed to VAT paid is an indicator of increasing non-compliance. By examining this ratio, this paper evaluates the potential for VAT non-compliance in the Restaurant and Take-out, Clothing and Footwear, Furniture and Floor-coverings, and Hairdressing markets. Estimates of aggregate expenditure are used to estimate potential gross VAT payments. These are compared with actual gross payments as an indicator of the extent of non-compliance.     

Introduction to Institutions,Entrepreneurship and Firm Growth: The Case of Sweden

Small Business Economics -     

The Phenomenon of Substantive Conflict in the Family Firm: A Cross-Generational Study

This study investigates the influence that family members exert on the extent and frequency of substantive conflict within family firms across generations as a result of their familial relationship (distance) with the owner/manager of the firm and the positions these family members occupy in the family work group and social (non-work) group. Following Beckhard and Dyer (1983), the construct of substantive conflict was vested in four key issues pertinent to family firms: (1) ownership continuity or change; (2) executive leadership continuity or change; (3) power and asset distribution; and (4) management's vision for the role of the firm in society. The results establish a relationship between conflict in a family business and the composition of the family's work group, non-work (social) group, and the extensiveness of the family's social interactions. The relationships between conflict and family influence were found to be moderated by the generations (first, second, third, or later) among involved family businesses.     

Market Orientation and Firm Performance: An Empirical Analysis of Ghanaian Microenterprises

ABSTRACT

While previous researchers have explored the relationship between market orientation and firm performance in larger organizations, such studies in microenterprises are scarce. This empirical study uses a structural equation model to examine the role of market orientation on firm performance of microenterprises operating in Ghana. To measure market orientation, we used a well-known scale (MARKOR), and the data (N = 347) for this study were collected from Ghanaian microenterprises using personal interviews. Study results indicated that the MARKOR scale provided a good measure of market orientation in Ghanaian microenterprises. The conceptualized model provided a good fit to the relationship between market orientation and the performance of Ghanaian microenterprises, indicating that market orientation as measured by MARKOR had a statistically significant positive impact on performance. However, the explanatory power of the model was relatively low, indicating the potential impact of other factors that were not incorporated in the model. Study implications are discussed.