Miles A. Zachary

Researching Long-Term Orientation A Validation Study and Recommendations for Future Research

Assumptions about the long-term orientation (LTO) of family firms are common in family business research. Drawing on prior conceptualizations, this article further develops and validates the LTO construct using content analysis techniques on two separate samples of data. Validation comes through empirical analysis of content validity, external validity, dimensionality, and concurrent validity. We find that family firms are higher than nonfamily firms on all three dimensions of LTO. We also discuss how future research can use this now-validated construct to address key questions in family business research, as well as inform the broader business literature.

Family Business and Market Orientation: Construct Validation and Comparative Analysis

Market orientation refers to the collection, dissemination, and utilization of market information that promotes a sustainable competitive advantage. Despite the contribution of the market orientation construct to both the strategic management and marketing literatures, little attention has been devoted to exploring how market orientation relates to family businesses and how these relationships might differ from nonfamily businesses. To address this gap and stimulate further research in this area of inquiry, this study develops and validates a market orientation measure using content analysis of CEO letters from the S&P 500 and tests for differences between family businesses and nonfamily businesses.

Assessing Espoused Goals in Private Family Firms Using Content Analysis

Understanding how private family firms gauge performance is of great interest to family business scholars. Unfortunately, finding comparable data to understand differences in the performance of such firms is challenging. This study draws from the organizational identity literature to show how private family firms communicate different goals in publicly available organizational narratives. The authors illustrate a process using content analysis that allows family business scholars to create a comparative data set that captures both normative and utilitarian goals using website and press release narratives from a sample of Australian firms.

Entry Timing Enduring Lessons and Future Directions

Entry decisions—often critical to firm survival and growth, market evolution, and industry profitability—have been the subject of inquiry for decades. In particular, the timing of entry decisions, drawing primarily on the first-mover advantage (FMA) perspective, has emerged as a prominent area of study. While previous research confirms that entry timing is critical, a large number of contingencies create conceptual and methodological complexities that undermine the formation of a rigorous theory of entry timing. In this article, we review and synthesize management and marketing research on entry timing published in top-tier outlets from 1989 through 2013—the 25-year period that followed the publication of Lieberman and Montgomery’s seminal article on FMA. Distilling key lessons from this literature, our review tries to establish a foundational understanding of the conditions, methods, implications, and strategies of entry timing so that research might be reinvigorated in this domain. Our article concludes by offering a conceptual model of entry based on the lessons gleaned from the articles that we reviewed.

An Archival Approach to Measuring Family Influence An Organizational Identity Perspective

Drawing from a framework highlighting how family influence is reflected in organizational identity, we present archival and content analytic adaptations for three key factors signifying alignment between family and organizational identities: family visibility, transgenerational sustainability, and family self-enhancement. We validate these measures using archival data sources, “About Us” pages, and shareholder letters from S&P 500 firms. Random coefficients modeling indicates our measures are largely shaped by temporal and firm, followed by industry, differences. Our work paves the way for further investigation exploring the relationships between family involvement and organizational identity while simultaneously addressing lingering methodological challenges in family business research.

Time to recalibrate? Exploring entrepreneurial orientation of family businesses before, during, and after an environmental jolt

Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) has become a construct of considerable interest in the family business literature. Despite such attention, scholars have yet to examine if and how EO in family businesses changes over time. This study explores this gap by investigating both continuous and discontinuous changes in EO in a sample of S%P 500 family businesses between 2001 and 2012. We find that EO changes before, during, and after an environmental jolt, which is defined as a major unforeseen and discontinuous environmental change. More specifically, we find that EO gradually increases at a linear rate prior to the occurrence of a jolt, discontinuously decreases during the initial stage of the jolt, then resumes a gradual linear growth trend following this period. We further explore the relationship between time and EO by examining change in EO across different industries, finding significant changes between family firms in different industries.

Configurational Approaches to the Study of Social Ventures

Abstract Purpose This chapter acknowledges the difficulties in the empirical study of social ventures – broadly defined as market-driven ventures that produce social change – that arise from the vast differences among social venture firms in terms of missions, goals, identities, strategies, and structures. In an effort to improve research in this area and advance the field of social entrepreneurship, the authors advocate approaching social ventures from a configurational perspective. Design/methodology This chapter begins with a discussion of what social ventures are and why organizational configurations – sets of firms that are similar across key characteristics – may be an appropriate perspective to utilize. Then, two methods – cluster analysis and set-theoretic analysis – are discussed in detail as ways to approach the study of social venture configurations. Details include descriptions of the techniques, instructions for use, examples, and limitations for each. Implications This chapter identifies research opportunities using configurations approaches in social venture research. Substantial possibilities for multilevel and temporally based research are discussed in depth. Originality/value A configurational approach can address the incongruence and non-findings in current social venture research and offers new opportunities for future research.

Book Review: Tales of Garcón: The Franchise Players

Many economists and organizational scholars would argue that corporate boards and managers should have objective criteria for evaluating firm performance and deciding between alternative courses of action. Of these, the primary criterion guiding decisions and subsequent actions should be the maximization of the long-term value of the firm. Those of us who study family businesses know, through our empirical work, that this single criterion does not always guide strategic choices. In their influential work, Gomez-Mejia, Haynes, NunezNickel, Jacobson, and Moyano-Fuentes (2007) applied behavioral theory to argue that the controlling families of family enterprises did not focus solely on the maximization of long-term value. Instead, they exercised their authority such that noneconomic goals were pursued to (a) advance family values through the business, (b) preserve the family’s control of the firm, and (c) fulfill family obligations. Although he has not focused on decision making in family businesses, Dan Ariely has written two recent books—Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality—that explore the irrational in individual decision making. He concludes, as most of us believe, that individuals are not guided solely by their pursuit of economic goals. As a scholar, I found Ariely’s books relevant for understanding the world of family business and a pleasure to read. Given the focus on individual decision making, they are clearly related to our understanding of marketing and buying decisions. In this review, I will share some thoughts regarding both books. I begin with his first book, Predictably Irrational, which challenges the basic economic assumption of the “rational man,” and move on to his second book, The Upside of Irrationality, which develops this line of thinking by offering some instances when individuals, organizations, and communities may benefit from our irrational tendencies. Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist, draws on the early work of Tversky and Kahneman (several of their writings can be found in Shafir, 2004). He works to understand why individuals often make choices that appear idiosyncratic and inconsistent with the goal of maximizing long-term value. While Predictably Irrational offers an engaging, relaxed, gee-whiz style, Ariely’s approach is empirical. To explore a common effect observed within family firms, the endowment effect (see, e.g., Zellweger & Astrachan, 2008), Ariely studied Duke Blue Devil basketball fans. He asked those who had just won tickets to a big game through a lottery the minimum amount that they would accept for their tickets and those who failed to win tickets the maximum amount that they would be willing to offer. Ariely notes, “From a rational perspective, both the ticket holders and the non-ticket holders should have thought of the game in exactly the same way” (p. 133). But whether or not a lottery entrant had been “endowed” with a ticket turned out to powerfully affect his or her sense of its value. On average, the winners indicated they would accept

Franchise branding: an organizational identity perspective

2,400 for their tickets, whereas those without the endowment were only willing to offer, on average,

Signaling Organizational Virtue: an Examination of Virtue Rhetoric, Country-Level Corruption, and Performance of Foreign IPOs from Emerging and Developed Economies

175. Ariely claims that his experiments, and others like them, reveal the underlying logic to what might be viewed as irrational choices. He writes, “Our irrational behaviors are neither random nor senseless—they are Book Reviews