The labor productivity of family firms : a socioemotional wealth perspective

In this chapter we examine the relationship between family firms and labor productivity. We focus on labor productivity for two reasons. First, it is an essential component of total factor productivity for which recent analyses have found differences between family and non-family firms. Second, it is directly tied to employees’ attitudes and behavior and therefore is a key indicator to look at in order to further understand people management related issues in family firms. A family firm is a firm controlled by a group of individuals related to each other by ties of blood or marriage. Family ownership is the most common type of ownership form in almost every country (La Porta et al., 1999; Gomez-Mejia et al., 2003). Further, family firms can be found in all economic sectors and size categories, and are also significantly present among publicly held firms (Gomez-Mejia et al., 2010). Because of this ubiquity, family firm research in recent years is becoming one of the classic lines of inquiry in the management and economics literature. This literature has gained momentum during the last decade, with significant contributions published in major academic journals

Socioemotional wealth : an obstacle or a springboard to creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship in family firms?

This chapter takes a socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective to explain how families influence the sensing and seizing of entrepreneurial opportunities in family firms. Specifically, this model proposes that some aspects of the family's SEW are conducive to opportunity recognition, while others impair it. Moreover, the presence of SEW goals leads family owners to favor certain entrepreneurial outcomes because there is a socioemotional reward for the family, even if there are no clear economic advantages. It is also suggested that family ownership negatively affects firms' transforming capacity in innovation. The end goal of this presentation is to enhance understanding of the positive and negative aspects of the family dimension on entrepreneurship and to guide future research in this area

Managerial family ties and employee risk bearing in family firms : evidence from Spanish car dealers

The paper argues that family firms in which the Top Management Team (TMT) is dominated by non-family managers are more likely to shift risk to employees through incentive pay schemes than family firms with TMTs dominated by family members. We also argue that this tendency is aggravated in firms of bigger size as this condition makes non-family managers more vulnerable. We further note that differences between family and non-family dominated TMTs may lessen when the sales trend is negative. The analyses conducted on a sample of 219 family controlled car dealerships in Spain confirm our expectations

Is nepotism so bad for family firms? A socioemotional wealth approach

This paper focuses on the issue of nepotism or the practice of hiring and managing family members in family firms. Extant research suggests that while nepotism is related to numerous problems, it also offers some unique advantages to family owned firms. We use a socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective to develop a theoretical framework that explains how nepotism influences firm performance. In doing so, we rely upon a nuanced conceptualization of SEW to clarify why some family firms are more likely to engage in nepotism than others, as well as explain the contingencies under which nepotism may prove beneficial or detrimental for family firms. Finally, we explore how human resource practices might impact the interplay between nepotism, environmental contingencies, and firm performance

Leader beliefs and CSR for employees : the case of telework provision

Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of top leaders beliefs in the importance of work-family balance as a key determinant in explaining the adoption of social practices oriented toward internal stakeholders, focussing on home telework as one of these practices. Design/methodology/approach: – A sample of 2,388 top executive officers reported the senior leaders belief favoring work-family balance by completing a new scale developed for this purpose asking how much key decision makers were convinced of the value to employees of supportive family-friendly HR practices, modeled how to balance work and family life, and felt a personal commitment to implement family-friendly practices. They also reported the firm’s provision of telework and organizational characteristics such as industry, multinational status, and firm size. Findings: – Regression analyses revealed that firm’s provision of telework is more pervasive when its top leaders believe in the importance of work-family balance, even after controlling for firm context (industry, geographical dispersion, and size). More importantly, the authors also find that managerial beliefs augment the positive effect of instrumental factors on the provision of home telework. Practical implications: – For practitioners, the most important message is that, while contextual and organizational features are important in the choice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices for employees, the conviction of senior leaders is absolutely essential. Originality/value: – This study contributes to the leadership and CSR literature by suggesting that top leaders play a catalyst role in contexts where telework is instrumentally valued. If we conceive CSR for employees as not driven solely by utilitarian logic, it requires a different paradigm that includes leadership motives

Team diversity and categorization salience : capturing diversity-blind, intergroup biased, and multicultural perceptions

It is increasingly recognized that team diversity with respect to various social categories (e.g., gender, race) does not automatically result in the cognitive activation of these categories (i.e., categorization salience), and that factors influencing this relationship are important for the effects of diversity. Thus, it is a methodological problem that no measurement technique is available to measure categorization salience in a way that efficiently applies to multiple dimensions of diversity in multiple combinations. Based on insights from artificial intelligence research, we propose a technique to capture the salience of different social categorizations in teams that does not prime the salience of these categories. We illustrate the importance of such measurement by showing how it may be used to distinguish among diversity-blind responses (low categorization salience), multicultural responses (positive responses to categorization salience), and intergroup biased responses (negative responses to categorization salience) in a study of gender and race diversity and the gender by race faultline in 38 manufacturing teams comprising 239 members