Owners and Ecological Corporate Entrepreneurship: The Effect of Family Ownership on Eco-innovation

This study examines the effect of family ownership on firm-level engagement in eco-innovation. Building on institutional theory and socioemotional wealth theory, we develop a model outlining the mediating role of concern for company reputation gains and the moderating role of the owning-family’s transgenerational intentions and of its local embeddedness. Our model is tested with data from the German part of the Community Innovation Survey using nonlinear moderated mediation analysis. We find support for most of our hypotheses and discuss key academic and practical implications

Family constitutions roles : two sides of the same coin?

The aim of the paper is to answer the call to deepen the research on this unexplored family governance mechanism and provide a first exploratory attempt to theorize the major roles of family constitutions

How midsize companies can compete in AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) as an upcoming general-purpose technology is poised to create many new business opportunities and to disrupt entire industries. Startups and large corporations are seizing AI opportunities and strengthening their position. But what about midsize companies that often lack access to big data and AI talent? These midsize firms risk being left behind in the age of AI. As a remedy, these firms should consider pooling their data and talent in joint AI ventures

Family influence and R&D spending in Dutch manufacturing SMEs: The role of identity and socioemotional decision considerations

Prior research has revealed a negative association between family influence and R&D spending. The dominant explanation for this association centers on the role of socioemotional considerations in decision-making. These socioemotional decision considerations are argued to play a more prominent role among family firms and to lower their R&D spending intensity. However, to date, this negative explanatory mechanism has not been empirically verified. Moreover, a deeper analysis of the literature suggests that some family-induced socioemotional considerations may actually stimulate R&D investments. In this study, four socioemotional decision considerations are delineated-namely, concern for current control, for extended preservation, for organizational reputation, and for organizational values and traditions-of which the first two are anchored in a family's nurturer role identity and the latter two in a family's organizational identification. It is hypothesized that those socioemotional considerations derived from a family's nurturer role identity constrain R&D spending, while those derived from the family's organizational identification boost R&D spending. The empirical study concentrates on the setting of privately held manufacturing SMEs, and using survey data on 365 such companies in the Netherlands, a structural equation model is estimated. The analyses reveal several interesting results: (1) the overall association between family firm status and R&D spending indeed turns out to be negative, and this negative effect is fully explained by family firms' preoccupation with extended preservation; (2) concerns for organizational reputation and for organizational values and traditions partly compensate the negative effect of the extended preservation mechanism. Key academic and practical implications of these findings are discussed