Post-crisis firm survival,business model changes,and learning: evidence from the Italian manufacturing industry

Small Business Economics - Company survival after recessions depends on the entrepreneurial ability of decision makers to react to the crisis and learn how to make the best use of chances. The aim...     

Market opportunities and owner identity: Are family firms different?

We test the hypothesis that ownership of a firm does not affect the firm's ability to seize market opportunities once decisions about productive structure are taken into account. By grouping firms in size clusters having a similar distance between the actual and the optimal size, we assess how the sensitivity of a firm's sales to market demand changes in response to differences in the owner's identity. We use data from a panel of 4696 continental western European firms over the period 1995–2010 and Eurostat 3-digit sectoral data on firm size distribution. Empirical evidence rejects the hypothesis of ownership irrelevance: family firms are less sensitive to market demand than other firms, in particular when the actual size of the firm is larger than optimal and in the case of both founder- and heir-run family firms.     

Firm age and the probability of product innovation. Do CEO tenure and product tenure matter?

This paper examines the influence that the age of a firm has on the probability of product innovation by taking into account two factors: the role of the CEO’s tenure and the lifecycle of the last product introduced. In a sample of Italian manufacturing firms (n = 2163), analysis reveals that the new entrants’ high innovative activity is mainly driven by the new CEO’s innovation propensity, which is strictly dependent on his tenure. Likewise, the lower innovation activity observed in mature firms is mostly explained by the dynamics of the product’s lifecycle and the CEO’s tenure. More generally, the existence of a negative relationship between innovation and firm age is questioned, as controlling for time-related variables that overlap during the company’s lifecycle —product age and CEO’s tenure — turns the relationship positive. Finally, the innovative behavior of incumbent companies turns out to be dependent on the renewal abilities of newly appointed external CEOs, whereas CEOs from within the family play a minor role.     

Explaining tourism competitiveness in small and medium destinations: the Italian case

The aim of the paper is to provide evidence of causal relationships between attributes of competitiveness and tourism destination competitiveness (TDC) in small and medium destinations (SMDs). A model of destination competitiveness has been developed and integrated with attributes of competitiveness, and then applied to a unique dataset of 370 outstanding Italian SMDs. A principal component analysis and a partial least square regression have been performed to test the model. The use of economic and financial measures as dependent variables, in addition to standard measures of destination performance, allows to investigate the concept of TDC from a wider economic point of view. Empirical evidence reveals that the multidimensionality and relativity of the concept of TDC influence the relationships among predictors and dependent variables. Managerial capabilities, quality of services, and policies aimed at fostering local empowerment are found to be key determinants of the competitiveness of Italian outstanding SMDs.     

Family succession and firm performance: Evidence from Italian family firms

This article contributes to the growing empirical literature on family firms by studying the impact of the founder–chief executive officer (CEO) succession in a sample of Italian firms. We contrast firms that continue to be managed within the family by the heirs to the founders with firms in which the management is passed on to outsiders. Family successions, that is, successions by the founder's heirs, are further analyzed by assessing the impact of the sectoral intensity of competition on the post-succession performance. This analysis also addresses the endogeneity in the timing of the CEO succession by controlling for a pure mean-reversion effect in the firm's performance. We find that the maintenance of management within the family has a negative impact on the firm's performance, and this effect is largely borne by the good performers, especially in the more competitive sectors. These results indicate that there is no inherent superiority of the family-firm structure and emphasize the importance of conducting an analysis of governance in a variety of institutional settings.