Boards of directors in family firms: a generational perspective

The purpose of this study is to advance the understanding of boards of directors in family firms. Building on generational changes in family attributes, we argue that firms in a different generational phase have different governance needs and characteristics. With regard to board task needs, the empirical results indicate a convex generational evolution in the need for board advice, and a rise over the generations in the need for board control. With regard to board composition, we find that the likelihood of having an outside director on the board has a convex generational trend. This relationship seems to be fully mediated by the firm’s board task needs. Furthermore, the number of family directors seems to increase over the generations. This study demonstrates that it is important to consider the generational phase of the family firm in order to understand its governance system.

Manipulation and Deception as Part of a Phishing Equilibrium

Free markets are products of peace and freedom, flourishing in stable times when people do not live in fear. But they also create an economic equilibrium that is highly suitable for enterprises that manipulate or distort our judgment on competitive markets. Unregulated free markets rarely reward the different kind of heroism, of those who restrain themselves from taking advantage of customers’ psychological or informational weaknesses. People frequently make decisions that are not in their best interest. Such bad decisions make it possible for them to be phished for phools. If we have some weakness or other—some way in which we can be phished for phools for more than the usual profit—in the phishing equilibrium, it will be taken up.     

Market-resistance and Valentine's Day events

Extending resistance theories, this article examines multi-method data spanning over seven years of events related to a holiday market. In the context of Valentine's Day, the authors present findings and develop knowledge on anti-consumption and alternative consumption. Specifically, this article introduces the recurring events of gift-resistance, retail-resistance, and market-resistance. Such consumer resistance often coexists with movements towards individualism and creation of more unique alternative consumption traditions.     

Innovation, rule breaking and the ethics of entrepreneurship

This article examines a feature of the ethics of entrepreneurship that is infrequently directly discussed, viz., rule breaking. Entrepreneurs are widely said to engage in rule breaking. Many examples of this appear in popular and academic literature. But how may this be integrated into an account of the ethics of entrepreneurship? One response would be that when entrepreneurs break legal and moral rules then what they do is wrong and ought to be condemned. There is a great deal to be said for this rule model of entrepreneurial ethics. However, this view is also mistaken. Instead, this article defends a virtue-based account of the ethics of entrepreneurship in which certain instances of rule breaking, even if morally wrong, are nevertheless ethically acceptable and part of the creative destruction that entrepreneurs bring not only to the economy but also to morality.