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Strategic responses of the family businesses in accommodation industry: lessons for overcoming crises

Nuno Fernandes Crespo (CSG∕ADVANCE, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Lisbon, Portugal)
Cátia Fernandes Crespo (CARME, School of Technology and Management, Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Leiria, Portugal) (CSG∕ADVANCE, Lisbon, Portugal)
Maria Calado (ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Lisbon, Portugal)

Journal of Family Business Management

ISSN: 2043-6238

Article publication date: 8 September 2022

Issue publication date: 2 March 2023

474

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is threefold: 1) to examine the relevance of specific strategic orientations for family businesses in the context of an intense crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic; 2) to investigate the role of a family adaptability in surviving the crisis; and 3) to assess how proactive strategic responses connected with marketing or retrenchment responses connected with reducing costs relate to the expected survival of the crisis.

Design/methodology/approach

The method adopted is a quantitative research approach. The theoretical framework uses a partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) for the data collected from an online survey of a sample of 544 family businesses in the accommodation industry.

Findings

This paper makes three main findings. First, family businesses that invest in operational marketing actions as a strategic response to the crisis have a high expectation of surviving the crisis. Second, family businesses that reduce their operational and labor costs as a strategic response have a low expectation of surviving the crisis. Third, the family business’s adaptability is also fundamental to their expectation of survival.

Originality/value

This is the first paper to identify the possible reactions of family businesses to the COVID-19 crisis. the authors show that there are proactive or retrenchment strategic responses, and the authors relate those responses to the expectancy of surviving the crisis. This is also the first study to examine the relevance of family adaptability as a measure of the resilience of family businesses and, therefore, as a determinant of the expectation of surviving the crisis.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Funds of the FCT – Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology within the projects UIDB/ 04928/2020 and UIDB/SOC/04521/2020.

Citation

Crespo, N.F., Crespo, C.F. and Calado, M. (2023), "Strategic responses of the family businesses in accommodation industry: lessons for overcoming crises", Journal of Family Business Management, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 118-145. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFBM-03-2022-0045

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited

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