Kimberly A. Eddleston

Feuding Families: When Conflict Does a Family Firm Good

Using the conflict theory lens and insights from the family business literature, we develop a theoretical model concerning the effects of task, process, and relationship conflict in family firms. Family firms are characterized by different control structures and generational involvement. Accordingly, we discuss the expected effect control concentration has on task, process, and relationship conflict, and propose that generational involvement affects the importance of task and process conflict to a family firms performance. Furthermore, our model suggests that relationship conflict moderates the outcomes of task and process conflict. The degree of relationship conflict in family firms is in turn influenced by altruism, which characterizes interactions among family members.

An Exploratory Study of Family Member Characteristics and Involvement: Effects on Entrepreneurial Behavior in the Family Firm

Family firms are essential for economic growth and development through new business startups and growth of existing family firms. Entrepreneurial behavior by the CEO is essential for such growth to occur. Entrepreneurial behavior can be influenced by inherent characteristics of the CEO, such as age and tenure, as well as by the degree of family influence in the firm, as indicated by the number of generations involved in the business. We assess the empirical relationships of these variables to both entrepreneurial behavior and subsequent firm growth.

Corporate Entrepreneurship in Family Firms: A Family Perspective

Entrepreneurship has been recognized as an important factor contributing to firm success. Despite the potential benefit of corporate entrepreneurship to sustain the family firm across generations, corporate entrepreneurship has been underresearched in the family firm literature. We investigate how generational involvement, willingness to change, and the ability to recognize technological opportunities impact corporate entrepreneurship in family firms. We also examine strategic planning in family firms as a facilitating process. Our findings suggest that willingness to change and technological opportunity recognition are positively related to corporate entrepreneurship in family firms. We further found strategic planning to significantly moderate the relationships between (1) generational involvement and (2) technological opportunity recognition and corporate entrepreneurship. These findings and implications for management and research are discussed.

Resource Configuration in Family Firms: Linking Resources, Strategic Planning and Technological Opportunities to Performance

We apply the resource-based view of the firm to the study of family firms by investigating how a family specific resource (reciprocal altruism) and a firm specific resource (innovative capacity) contribute to family firm performance. We then examine how the impact of these resources is moderated by strategic planning and technological opportunities. Our findings suggest that family firms can benefit from emphasizing the positive aspects of kinship and from developing innovative capacities. As such, we demonstrate that not only do firm specific resources contribute to family firm performance, but also that family relationships can be a source of competitive advantage for a family firm. In addition, we found a heightened importance of reciprocal altruism in environments rich in technological opportunities, and that strategic planning is more important for those family firms that lack innovative capacities.

Why Networks Enhance the Progress of New Venture Creation: The Influence of Social Capital and Cognition

Why does social capital influence the progress of new venture creation for some entrepreneurs more than others? Our investigation suggests that social capital is not enough; that the type of person involved in network relationships matters to new venture creation. We test the effects of the interplay of social capital and cognition on a sample of 269 entrepreneurs. Our results confirm that social networks and relational capital enhance levels of illusion of control, which is directly related to the progress of new venture creation. We find marginal support for the relationship between social capital and risk propensity.

Extending the Socioemotional Wealth Perspective: A Look at the Dark Side

We extend the socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective by arguing that SEW can be negatively associated with proactive stakeholder engagement (PSE). We further suggest that the SEW dimensions can be associated with positive or negative valence. Lastly, we propose that negatively valenced SEW dimensions lead to family–centric behavior, which negatively affects PSE. This multifaceted conceptualization of SEW allows us to explain how family firms can partake in harmful stakeholder behaviors despite having seemingly strong SEW. Our paper suggests that SEW can be either an affective endowment or burden for family firms and their constituents.

Exploring the Entrepreneurial Behavior of Family Firms: Does the Stewardship Perspective Explain Differences?

Drawing from stewardship theory, we investigated corporate entrepreneurship in family firms. We argued that stewardship culture determinants––comprehensive strategic decision making, participative governance, long–term orientation, and human capital––differentiate the most entrepreneurial family firms. Based on a study of 179 family firms, we showed that comprehensive strategic decision making and long–term orientation contribute to corporate entrepreneurship. Additionally, family–to–firm unity enhanced the positive effects participative governance and long–term orientation have on corporate entrepreneurship. While we found that family–to–firm unity can compensate for low human capital, unexpectedly, we also found that family–to–firm unity can dampen the positive relationship between human capital and corporate entrepreneurship.

Nurturing Entrepreneurs' Work-Family Balance: A Gendered Perspective

A survey of 258 entrepreneurs examined how positive facets of their family experiences, family–to–business enrichment, and support, nurture their satisfaction with work–family balance. Satisfaction with work–family balance was nurtured by instrumental family–to–business enrichment to the advantage of women as a group and by instrumental support from the family at home to the advantage of men as a group. Overall, results supported feminist theories that depict entrepreneurship as a gendered process. Female entrepreneurs tend to nurture satisfaction with work–family balance by creating work–family synergies, whereas male entrepreneurs tend to nurture satisfaction with work–family balance by obtaining family support at home.

Governance and Trust in Family Firms: An Introduction

We provide an overview of the articles and commentaries devoted to theories of family enterprise in this special issue and link them to the concept of trust. Trust is a governance mechanism and theoretical construct of particular relevance for family firms, encapsulating some of their advantages and disadvantages. Trust is also linked to theoretical frameworks such as agency theory, stewardship theory, social capital theory, and transaction cost economics that are often used in family business studies, including those found in this special issue. Consequently, we advance trust as a bridging concept to reconcile and enhance our understanding of family firms as a unique organizational form.

Conflict, Participative Decision-Making, and Generational Ownership Dispersion: A Multilevel Analysis

This study examines how participative decision‐making and generational ownership dispersion affect conflict in a sample of privately held U.S. family firms. Our study utilizes a hierarchical linear model approach to investigate “cross‐level” effects between variables from different levels of analysis. Participative decision‐making among family members was found to be associated with cognitive and relationship conflict. Furthermore, the relationship between participative decision‐making and conflict as individual‐level variables was moderated by generational ownership dispersion, a firm‐level variable. When ownership was dispersed through multiple generations, participative decision‐making was found to be positively related to cognitive and relationship conflict; however, in one‐ and two‐generation ownership firms participative decision‐making was found to be negatively related to cognitive and relationship conflict.