The missing lens in family firm governance theory: a self-other typology of parental altruism

In this paper, the authors derive a typology of five parental altruistic archetypes that exhausts the possible altruistic influences in the governance at family firms. They argue that when taken in concert, these five types comprise a more balanced explanation of the cross-sectional variance in the governance efficiency of these firms and therefore can better explain why some family firms are more able than others to capitalize on the family governance's positive attributes.family firms; parental altruism; governance

Towards a Post-Structural View of Competition: Three Cases of Horizontal Merger

We examine the question of adaptive firm conduct using longitudinal product-level data from three large horizontal mergers in the food manufacturing industry. Our model is grounded in a poststructural view of competition that we deduce from recent writings from the fields of strategy, organizational ecology, and industrial organization. Consistent with this model, we find that the influence of horizontal merger on product performance (i.e., rent) varies with the product niche, time, the specific firms that merged, and dominance of the product, and its market scope.Industrial Organization,

A social capital model of high growth ventures

International audienceWe use social capital theory to explain how human and social capital affect a venture's ability to accumulate financial capital during its growth stages (before an initial public offering) and its performance during the two-year period after going public. Consistent with theory, data drawn from a sample of 275 ventures that went public indicate that social capital leverages the productivity of a venture's resource base and provides the venture with a durable source of competitive advantage.<br/

Exploring the agency consequences of ownership dispersion among the directors of private family firms

International audienceUsing an agency-theoretic lens and insights drawn from the behavioral economics and family business literatures, this study developed hypotheses concerning the effect of dispersion of ownership on the use of debt by private family-owned and family-managed firms. A field study of 1,464 family firms was conducted. Results suggest that, during periods of market growth, the relationship between the use of debt and the dispersion of ownership among directors at family firms can be graphed as a U-shaped curve. The nonlinear relationship suggests that family firms are most vulnerable to conflict, and least willing to bear added risk, when ownership is split in relatively equal proportions. Interestingly, the fact that this distribution appeared in only 22% of the sample firms suggests that most family firm owners may take such risk into consideration when making their estate plans<br/

Transformational Leadership's Role in Promoting Corporate Entrepreneurship : Examining the CEO - TMT Interface

International audienceResearch about transformational CEOs' impact on firm-level outcomes, particularly corporate entrepreneurship, has been equivocal, partially because the underlying mechanisms remain largely unexplored. Given that the individuals most closely influenced by a firm's CEO are its top management team (TMT) members, we focus on the CEO-TMT interface as a salient intervening mechanism. We posit that transformational CEOs influence TMTs' behavioral integration, risk propensity, decentralization of responsibilities, and long-term compensation and that these TMT characteristics impact corporate entrepreneurship. Data from 152 firms supported most of our hypothesized links, underscoring how the CEO-TMT interface helps explain transformational CEOs' role in promoting corporate entrepreneurship.<br/

PERSPECTIVE A framework for comparing entrepreneurship processes across nations

Abstract Shane and Venkataraman&apos;s Discovery, Evaluation and Exploitation entrepreneurship framework ignores issues central to comparative international entrepreneurship (IE) because of unnecessarily under-socialized assumptions regarding entrepreneurial opportunities and the individuals who discover them. To better promote comparative IE research, we develop a Comparative Discovery, Evaluation and Exploitation framework (CDEE), which takes as a starting point that individuals motivated by diverse goals enact market opportunities in a variety of social settings. Building on this characterization, the paper explores how and why processes of opportunity discovery, evaluation and exploitation vary across and within nations, as well as the implications of these differences

The role of an entrepreneurially alert information system in promoting corporate entrepreneurship.

The literature has suggested that an entrepreneurially alert information system may be a salient driver of corporate entrepreneurship, even though this role has been neither theoretically articulated nor empirically substantiated. Building upon the organizational learning, information orientation, and entrepreneurial awareness literatures we identify three key elements of a firm&apos;s entrepreneurially alert information system, and then develop a parsimonious model that examines the impact of these elements on corporate entrepreneurship. Using both single-and multi-source survey data from 495 small-to medium-sized firms, we test our model and find that each element individually and collectively imparts significant positive influence on corporate entrepreneurship