Jolien Huybrechts

Entrepreneurial Risk Taking of Private Family Firms: The Influence of a Nonfamily CEO and the Moderating Effect of CEO Tenure

This article aims to increase our understanding of family firms’ entrepreneurial risk-taking behavior by looking at the differences between family and nonfamily firms and by studying variations among family firms. We find empirical support for a positive influence of a nonfamily CEO on the family firm’s level of entrepreneurial risk taking during the initial years of his or her CEO tenure and a leveling out of entrepreneurial risk taking as the CEO tenure of the nonfamily CEO is extended. We build on the concept of psychological ownership to explain these new findings.

The Distinctiveness of Family Firm Intangibles: A Review and Suggestions for Future Research

We review the theoretical and empirical literature on the resource-based view in the context of family businesses using a framework of intangible resources. This approach allows us to structure the present research on value-adding resources in family firms into four clearly distinct groups – organizational culture, reputation, human capital and networks – and provides us with the opportunity to examine the interactions of these intangible resources.We use these relationships to offer a future research agenda that is focused on the creation of competitive advantage through the combination and recombination of these resources.

Entrepreneurial education and learning at universities: exploring multilevel contingencies

Abstract Despite the worldwide increase in entrepreneurship education offered at universities, there is an ongoing debate whether and under which conditions this type of education contributes to students’ entrepreneurial learning. Building on human capital theory, we hypothesize that the exposure to various entrepreneurship education initiatives has an inverted U-shaped relationship with entrepreneurial learning outcomes. We also argue that this relationship is moderated by the entrepreneurial experience of the students, the teaching pedagogy applied in entrepreneurial initiatives offered at the university and the prevalence of opportunity-driven entrepreneurship in the country. A multi-level analysis on a cross-country sample of 87,918 students resulting from GUESSS (‘Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students’ Survey’) strongly confirms our hypotheses, and allows us to discuss implications for researchers, educators and policy makers with respect to the nature of entrepreneurial learning, the design of entrepreneurial education programs, as well as the contextual conditions that impact entrepreneurial learning outcomes.

The Board's Demography — Firm Performance Relationship Revisited: A Bayesian Approach

Building on behavioral theory, we argue that the effect of board demography on the performance of small and medium‐sized family firms differs significantly at the individual firm level and that the degree by which board task performance meets board task needs explains this effect. Using a Bayesian estimation method, we obtain firm specific estimates of the effect of board demography on firm performance. Analysis of these estimates indicates that the size of the gap between board task needs and board task performance explains the effects of the board demographic characteristics—board size and percentage of family directors—on firm performance.

Analyzing firm-varying investment-cash flow sensitivities and cash-cash flow sensitivities: A Bayesian approach

ABSTRACT We employ a Bayesian estimator to construct firm-varying investment-cash flow sensitivities (ICFS) for a sample of 90 Spanish listed firms over a 10-year period (1999–2008). We then analyze which variables are associated with the firm-level ICFS estimates. The results indicate that firms with high ICFS are capital-intensive firms with high growth rates that have exhausted much of their debt capacity. Furthermore, high-ICFS firms have lower liquidity, lower profitability and lower stock market valuation than their counterparts. These results provide evidence that high-ICFS firms have higher external financing needs while faced with fewer available external financing sources. Our analysis suggests that, at least for Spanish listed firms over the observed sample period, the ICFS is an adequate proxy for gauging a firms exposure to financing constraints. A similar exercise on firm-varying cash-cash flow sensitivities (CCFS) suggests no relation between the firms CCFS and exposure to financing constraints.

Boards of Advisors in Family Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises

This study examines the determinants of advisory boards in Dutch family small- and medium-sized enterprises. Boards of advisors consist of committed people that recurrently provide advice to the family firm’s decision-makers. Using resource-dependence theory, we hypothesize and find empirical support for the positive influence of highly dynamic environments on the presence of an advisory board. Contrary to our expectations, the presence of a board of directors positively influences the likelihood of having an advisory board, suggesting complementarity between these two governance mechanisms. We found no support for a generational effect on advisory board presence.

Inquiring Into Appreciative Inquiry: A Conversation With David Cooperrider and Ronald Fry:

David Cooperrider and Ronald Fry are professors of organizational behavior at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). CWRU’s Department of Organizational Behavior is consistently acknowledged as one of the best in the world by the Financial Times. Together with their mentor, Suresh Srivastva, they created Appreciative Inquiry (AI) over 30 years ago. Since then, AI has been extensively applied worldwide, and many exciting results have been achieved and published. This article is grounded in an in-depth conversation with David and Ron at the World Appreciative Inquiry Conference 2012, and subsequent discussions between 2012 and 2016. It focuses on how AI has been contributing to a generative scholarship and what new possibilities are on the horizon to strengthen these efforts. In the epilogue, we highlight contributions to current debates around generative scholarship, and offer recommendations to heighten the generative potential of AI and our field.

Measuring Financing Constraints Using Firm-Level Estimation of Investment-Cash Flow Sensitivities: A Bayesian Approach

We employ a Bayesian estimation technique to construct firm-varying investment-cash flow sensitivities (ICFS) for a sample of 90 Spanish listed firms over a 10-year period (1999-2008). Then we analyze which variables are associated with the firm-level ICFS-estimates both univariately and multivariately. The results indicate that firms with high ICFS are capital-intensive firms with high-growth rates that have exhausted much of their debt-capacity. Furthermore, high ICFS-firms have lower liquidity-measures, lower profitability-measures and lower stock-market valuation than their counterparts. These results provide strong evidence that high ICFS-firms have higher financing needs while faced with fewer available financing sources. Our analysis suggests that, at least for Spanish listed firms over the observed sample-period, the ICFS is an adequate proxy to measure the firm’s exposure to financing constraints.