Michela Floris

The Impact of Shared Stories on Family Firm Innovation: A Multicase Study

Innovation is a key determinant of long-term success for family firms. We apply a multiple case study research design to investigate the relationship between stories that are shared among family members across generations and the family firms’ innovations. We derive a set of four propositions suggesting that founder focus in stories is negatively and family focus is positively associated with innovation. We further propose that these relationships are mediated by the scope of decision-making options, the distribution of decision-making power between generations, and the role of conflict in the families.

How small family-owned businesses may compete with retail superstores : Tacit knowledge and perceptive concordance among owner-managers and customers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the “perceptive concordance” – the proximity of perceptions of the business- between key managers and customers of two small family-owned and managed businesses (“FBs”) and two larger non-FBs in Cagliari, Italy as a preliminary basis for understanding how small retail businesses that are typically family owned have continued to compete and thrive in many Western European cities. Design/methodology/approach – The authors asked how small FBs have been able to compete in an advanced European economy despite apparent competitive disadvantages relative to large superstores selling the same products. In addressing this question the authors drew on a qualitative research methodology in which the authors interviewed senior managers and surveyed customers of the four businesses and applied an original statistical model to assess the degree of their perceptive concordance with over 100 customers of each business. Findings – The studys findings suggest a significant...

Building innovative models of territorial governance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine public‐private partnerships with a particular focus on the impact that such partnerships have on territorial governance. These organizations are spread all over the world with the goal of promoting community participation and sustainable development, and engaging citizens and organizations in the decision making of local governance. This situation underlines important changes in governance and territorial governance models.Design/methodology/approach – A mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches are used. Analysing the existing literature, the paper focuses on specific type of public‐private partnership: the Local Action Group (LAG). Specifically, this study focuses on 63 Italian LAGs, in order to highlight their role in the challenges that local governance has to face.Findings – Findings suggest that public‐private partnerships can represent a new model of governance – the Partnership Governance – with features that differentiate this form from other...

Challenges for New Models of Territorial Governance: Learning from the Experience of Italian LAGs

Governance is a complex and polyhedral concept focused on the polity dimension of political activity. In this scenario, “Territorial Governance” is not only a governance process applied to urban and territorial policies but also a complex process that has specific characteristics stemming from its objective and territory and helps achieve the broader goal of territorial development and cohesion. Thus, understanding “territorial” needs is relevant. This aspect has emerged in recent decades and is characterized by increasing involvement of territorial entities. Citizen panels, open meetings, and public assemblies, for example, engage citizens, organizations, and firms with the goal of promoting sustainable development and direct participation in territorial governance policies. In particular, recent decades have seen the spread of a specific way of involving private and public organizations in the decision-making process related to territorial policies: the creation of public-private partnerships. The purpose of this paper is to examine this topic in depth, focusing on the impact that public-private partnerships may have on territorial governance. Specifically, in reviewing the governance theory literature, our goal is to propose a new model of territorial governance with specific elements derived from the experience of public-private partnerships. To do this, we fix our attention on a specific type of public-private partnership engaged in territorial development and cohesion: the Local Action Group (LAG). In particular, using a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches, this study uses a sample of 63 LAGs located in Italy to highlight the LAG’s role in challenges that territorial governance faces. Based on the results and findings in this study, we introduce an innovative governance model called Partnership Governance.

The Impact of Storytelling on Innovation: a Multi Case Study

The founder’s values and beliefs are often determinant for family business’ later organizational path and as such affect the organization’s level of innovation. Building on recent research that has identified storytelling as an important means to imprint the founder’s values and beliefs, we apply a multi-case research design to investigate how different foci of those stories affect a family firm’s level of innovation. We suggest that founder-centered stories entail a focus on decisions that match with the founder’s values, hierarchical decision-making, and destructive conflicts, which ultimately lead to low levels of innovation. To the contrary, family-centered stories free family members in their decision-making and entail a collaborative decision-making characterized by low levels of conflicts. As a result, those firms have higher levels of innovation as compared to firms with founder-centered stories. We summarize our findings in a model of path creation in family firms.

The Importance of Values in Family Businesses in Spreading Ethical Business Paradigms

This chapter focuses on values in family firms and suggests that family businesses have a great opportunity in spreading ethical business paradigms. They differ from non-family businesses in how values can be transmitted across generations and among members. The arguments are the following: A few words to introduce a complex topic. Values, climate, and culture. Family business: a pervasive phenomenon. Family business values: basic concepts. Certain critical aspects of family firm values. The role of family values in the creation of family firm climate and culture. Towards a new ethical business paradigm.

Building High-Quality Customer Relationships in Family Firms: What’s New?

Customer relationship is a key competitive of business, related to the ability of management to attract, maintain and enhance purchase relations (Berry, 1983). The need of a deeper understanding of the quality of these relations is an assumption for better answering customer needs and improve management knowledge. This involves a management’s comprehensive view of the whole system of beliefs, feelings, opinions, trust and emotions of customers that encompasses the aptitude of management to hold the right perception of different business aspects. This is not an automatic bent for managers customer oriented, probably because managers used to organise their customer interaction in centralized marketing functions to better accomplish service production for their customers (Eriksson & Mattson, 2002). In this way relationships with customers are relatively more emotional and behavioural, centred on such variables such as bonding, empathy, reciprocity or trust (Yau et al., 2000). For these reasons, the purpose of this work is to find a way able to evaluate the quality of customer relationship management in terms of the right management perceptions on customer beliefs. Through an empirically-based research method based on multiple customer respondents of a questionnaire on their perceptions this work tries to contribute to the largely theoretical literature on CRM. Results show that not always management perception finds confirmation in customer beliefs. This condition undermines the quality of customer relationship management. The implication of this research allows to better achieve a business customer orientation with the understanding in depth of customer leanings (Lengnick-Hall, 1996) and to increase and improve management tacit knowledge in relation to this specific aspects. As Stefanou et al. (2003) suggest, knowledge about key customers is essential for CRM as it can be used to develop a “learning relationship” with customers (Zahay and Griffin, 2004). Customer preferences and needs may be captured both directly or indirectly in an interactive feedback system that bases on the right management perception.This research poses in a significance field of analysis that is still underdeveloped inside the stream of relationship researches (Bitner, 1995; Sheth & Parvatiar, 1995; Sheth & Sollner, 1999) where studies of management perception aspects are still little (Eriksson & Mattsson, 2002), in fact, few researches have focused on creating measurement scale and testing the CRM concepts empirically (Sin et al., 2005) especially regard on management perception.

Learning from a Wrong Consumer Perception: Bridging the Gap Between Created Value and Perceived Value

In the light of the development of E-CRM, the right customer perception of web site can improve management and customer relationships and better orients web site goals. This is true particularly in a specific market as well as the online tourism. The aim of this work is to underline how a wrong consumer perception may affect goals of a web site and consequently what management have to learn from this misunderstanding. The theoretical analysis is established on a tourism site web called Terremobili (Italy) through a learning approach that shows the misinterpretation between management and customer perception about the offer of this web site. Interviewing management and analyzing information, we demonstrated that the web site initially did not meet consumer needs and beliefs, and, moreover, its structure generated a wrong perception of consumer observation. The study offers useful details about which consequences firms may suffer because of a wrong customer perception of the web site generating opportunistic behaviors. Conclusion underlines the need of a perceptive concordance between management and customer perception as a way for the businesses to aim their goals.

Percezione del management e percezione del cliente: un confronto sui punti di forza dell'impresa

On the Measurement of Perceived Customer Value: A Formative Mode Customer value is unanimously considered to be one of the most fundamental concepts in marketing theory. Nonetheless, customer value measurement has been at best sparse or minimal. The authors specify and test a formative measurement model of customer value which describes the additive contribution of four categories of benefits and three categories of sacrifices to customer value formation. The authors present results of measurement scale development process in three consumption contexts, and show that the proposed model, which they call perceived consumption experience value (PCEV), is reliable and valid, and is able to predict customer satisfaction and loyalty better than the Gale method. Keywords: customer value, benefits and sacrifices analysis, measurement Parole chiave: valore per il cliente, analisi benefici/sacrifici, misurazione