Matthias Filser

The entrepreneurial marketing domain: a citation and co-citation analysis

Purpose – Entrepreneurial marketing (EM) is at the brink of becoming an established discipline. To advance the field further and to better guide research efforts in different sub categories, the purpose of this paper is to examine the field’s intellectual structure with the help of citation and co-citation analysis. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is based on a two-stage research design. First a citation analysis is carried out through which thematic clusters are identified. In a second step a co-citation analysis is conducted to determine the intellectual structure of EM research. Findings – This study exposes the most influential authors and publications and emphasizes conjunctions among scholars and their findings. Results show three streams that are the foundation of EM research: theoretical foundations of management, entrepreneurship, and marketing; the research interface of marketing and entrepreneurship; SME and new venture marketing. Research limitations/implications – The results of a bibliometric analysis are limited by the publications that have been selected as a starting point. However, through the selection criteria chosen to identify the database for analysis, the authors are confident that the results illustrate the intellectual structure of EM research in its entirety. The authors recommend that future research should be conducted in one of the three sub-fields identified in this study. Practical implications – By laying out different research streams within EM it is hoped that future research will be guided in different directions. “Fine-tuning” of research efforts will benefit small, new, and entrepreneurial firms. Originality/value – The analyses conducted in this paper draw a picture of the field that is based on a quantitative approach and therefore sets itself apart from other literature reviews that have a qualitative core.

Coopetition research: towards a better understanding of past trends and future directions

Over the past two decades, coopetition received growing attention by practitioners and scholars worldwide with a wide range of subjects explored within the current body of literature. Despite the constantly growing number of scientific publications, the current literature lacks a comprehensive and critical overview of past and present research accomplishments. Based on the first citation analysis in this field, we present three topical clusters which help us to indicate the evolution path of coopetition research. Additionally, the current literature state is studied by means of a systematic literature review reflecting the major research avenues. By combining and comparing the results of these two analyses, the paper concludes by proposing possible future research directions. To advance our current understanding of coopetition, we suggest that forthcoming research explores coopetition in the contexts of startups and family firms and extends our knowledge on the protection mechanisms which are necessary for coopeting successfully.

Psychological aspects of succession in family business management

Purpose - Family firms appear to be an attractive topic in a number of research areas. Probably the most important topic is still the succession process combined with possible hurdles and gaps. This paper aims to focus on the special variable of the psychological dimension. It attempts to summarize findings and implications as well as suggestions for where potential research gaps are. Design/methodology/approach - The paper is based on a two-stage research design. The first step is a literature review. All articles published in the Findings - Psychological aspects are often used together with other constructs. The authors strongly recommend handling them as an individualized, highly complex topic, even if social, political, and other aspects are often mixed with psychological aspects and therefore difficult to discuss and separate. A separation of these factors will help researchers present findings in a much clearer way. Research limitations/implications - The main limitation of the article lies in the methodology itself, as the literature review solely concentrates on empirical papers that exclusively investigate psychological aspects with regard to succession. Nevertheless, the aim was to elaborate a focused psychological field model in terms of succession. Likewise, critical aspects considering the family business system have been taken into consideration. Finally, a literature review is commonly seen as a post-work “dead body”. However, the implications show a clear, directed focus within family business research. The authors recommend an increase in the number of concisely formulated research questions instead of generic approaches. Practical implications - Businesses should closely heed three imperative problem areas (individual, interpersonal and organizational) as well as the stage in which conflicts arise (preparation, transfer/takeover, and continuation), if they want to be successful in the succession process. Originality/value - The paper offers an overview of the limited number of existing articles and their implications that address the psychological aspects of the succession process. Furthermore, the psychological issues identified that cause conflicts during succession are consolidated and categorized.

Innovation In Family Firms — Examining The Inventory And Mapping The Path

Over the past decade, research on innovation in family firms has received growing attention by scholars and practitioners around the globe with a wide range of aspects explored within the current body of literature. Despite the constantly growing number of scientific publications, research lacks a comprehensive and critical review of past and present research achievements. First, conducting a bibliometric analysis with a focus on innovation in family firms, we identify five topical clusters that help to understand the foundations of recent findings: namely ownership and governance, structural settings, organizational culture and behaviour, resources, and innovation and strategy. Second, based on a thorough literature review the major research avenues are reflected. The comparison of the results of both analyses showed the following areas for future research on family firm innovation: members‘ individual human capital and their leadership behaviour, openness to externals, cross-country comparisons, and finally the family‘s functional integrity on innovation performance.

The effect of financial resource availability on entrepreneurial orientation, customer orientation and firm performance in an international context: an empirical analysis from Austria and Hungaria

This study investigates the impact of financial resource availability on entrepreneurial orientation (EO), customer orientation (CO) and on growth in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in Austria and Hungary. Structural equation modeling revealed that financial resource availability is attributed to EO and, subsequently, to firm growth. However, differences prevail between the two analyzed countries. While financial resource availability fosters CO in Hungary, there is no effect identified with regard to financial resource availability and CO in Austria. Furthermore, the effect of CO on firm growth showed negative effects in both of the analyzed countries.

Family firm configurations for high performance: The role of entrepreneurship and ambidexterity

The performance drivers of family firms have spawned considerable research interest. Almost exclusively this research has relied on independent sets of explanatory variables in linear analyses. These analyses mask the complex interdependencies that are likely to exist among key success factors, leading to faulty theory and misspecified implications for practice. As treatment, the authors propose a configuration approach to family firm performance that accounts for complex interdependencies among entrepreneurial, innovation and family influence conditions. Using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis of a sample of 129 Finnish family firms, the authors identify sufficient conditions with regard to the existence or absence of antecedent conditions to family firm performance. These conditions include entrepreneurial orientation, exploration and exploitation activities that form causal paths towards family firm performance. To enrich the analysis, the authors theorize and empirically analyse how these conditions might differ in family firms with high and low levels of family influence. They deepen the current understanding of configurations that promote the performance of family firms, offer important implications for theory and practice, and set new directions for future research on the strategic management of family firms. The results are also virtually identical and insensitive to change across subjective and objective performance measures.

Entrepreneurial Orientation: The Dark Triad of Executive Personality

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to shed light on how certain executive personality traits, what we call the Dark Triad of Personality, impact the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) performance. Existing research has demonstrated a positive EO-performance relationship, and this study seeks to examine whether the strength of the EO-performance relationship depends upon executive narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. A regression analysis was conducted to test the effect of executive personality over a sample of 131 executives of SMEs in Eastern Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Vorarlberg (Austrian Rhine Valley). Very few studies focus on the moderating role of executive personality with regard to the EO-performance relationship. Even though our findings indicate a strong positive relationship between EO and SME performance, analysis of the contingency model produced no significant findings. Executive narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy hence only show insignificant negative effects on the EO-performance relationship.