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Family business firms (FBFs) constantly struggle with the challenge of successfully reaching and surviving beyond the third generation. Narrative or storytelling is frequently used in business to transmit knowledge, achieve goals, create and maintain a connection with stakeholders, and achieve sustained growth. Most FBFs consciously or unconsciously use narrative and possess their own discourse, which is unique to every family and family business and which may aid FBFs in achieving continuity. FBFs must have an adequate atmosphere of collaboration and cooperation so that group members can transform acquired tacit knowledge through storytelling into explicit action. FBFs should be prepared to help collaborators and other stakeholders build competencies since tacit knowledge transfer, through narrative, can aid in the solving of problems, enhance innovativeness, and improve strategic decision-making. Therefore, narrative may well aid FBFs in fulfilling their ultimate goal of continuity. The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate the potential influence of narrative on FBFs’ continuity and prevention of their precipitous expiration. This chapter contributes to previous literature that sheds light on the narrative implications of FBFs, and depicts FBFs’ narratives and the dynamics of their business objectives, as well as touches on the heterogeneous nature of each family business’ storyline. There are various advantages to FBFs’ storytelling; perhaps the most noteworthy is the achievement of sustained business growth and continuity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has become threatening for economies, causing recession and increased unemployment rates. Many employees in the sectors affected by the crisis face the risks of losing their jobs, getting on unpaid leave, and decreasing their weekly working hours. Various governments including the Turkish government have started struggling with unemployment and embraced macro level measures including support for SMEs, wage subsidies, and new working models. At the micro level, implementation of flexible working methods has been encouraged and has increased with respect to scope and scale. Both governments and companies tried their best to ensure business continuity and prevent unemployment. Actually, business continuity has gained great importance for ensuring sustainability and minimizing the effects of the pandemic. However, previous studies have revealed that approximately 25% of companies all over the world have a continuity plan. This chapter aims to examine the effects of the pandemic and macro level and micro level measures taken by Turkish authorities to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on employment rates and business continuity, thus providing insight into crisis management through a real experience. This study also attempts to explain how Turkish authorities can contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through pandemic measures and teleworking.

The authors derive a risk lower bound in estimating the threshold parameter without knowing whether the threshold regression model is continuous or not. The bound goes to zero as the sample size n grows only at the cube-root rate. Motivated by this finding, the authors develop a continuity test for the threshold regression model and a bootstrap to compute its p-values. The validity of the bootstrap is established, and its finite-sample property is explored through Monte Carlo simulations.

We discuss the two most popular frameworks for identification, estimation and inference in regression discontinuity (RD) designs: the continuity-based framework, where the conditional expectations of the potential outcomes are assumed to be continuous functions of the score at the cutoff, and the local randomization framework, where the treatment assignment is assumed to be as good as randomized in a neighborhood around the cutoff. Using various examples, we show that (i) assuming random assignment of the RD running variable in a neighborhood of the cutoff implies neither that the potential outcomes and the treatment are statistically independent, nor that the potential outcomes are unrelated to the running variable in this neighborhood; and (ii) assuming local independence between the potential outcomes and the treatment does not imply the exclusion restriction that the score affects the outcomes only through the treatment indicator. Our discussion highlights key distinctions between “locally randomized” RD designs and real experiments, including that statistical independence and random assignment are conceptually different in RD contexts, and that the RD treatment assignment rule places no restrictions on how the score and potential outcomes are related. Our findings imply that the methods for RD estimation, inference, and falsification used in practice will necessarily be different (both in formal properties and in interpretation) according to which of the two frameworks is invoked.

This paper seeks to explain the “great continuity” in Spanish American development: the fact that territories in the region have maintained their relative levels of social development since precolonial times. It tests competing explanations associated with neo-modernization theory, geographic perspectives, and institutional approaches emphasizing property rights versus ethnicity. The paper uses comparative-historical methods to evaluate competing explanations. These methods include cross-case matching and within-case process tracing. The paper finds that patrimonial institutions of ethnic stratification are a fundamental cause of social development and the great continuity in Spanish America. These institutions help explain why areas with a dense indigenous population tend to have low levels of social development, whereas areas with a sparse indigenous population tend to have high levels of social development. This paper suggests that the institutions of ethnic stratification may be more important than the institutions of private property as a cause of development. Scholars of development need to focus more attention on the ways in which ethnic institutions shape identities and create collective groups.

The chapter explores the stages of development of an outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) institutional field during periods of major system change in big emerging economies. The state and its agencies appear to be the principal institutional entrepreneurs in developing the OFDI organizational field. Consequently, the development of OFDI institutions depends heavily on the extent to which state policy is consistent in supporting the regulative, normative and cognitive pillars enabling and promoting but also monitoring and controlling OFDI. The chapter concludes by advancing theoretical propositions positing the relationship between continuity, the maturity of the OFDI organizational field and the level of institutional entrepreneurship stemming from governmental and business sources.

What are the unique challenges for daughters who inherit ownership in family enterprise? How does their path to ownership influence their impact? What dilemmas are associated with their ownership roles? How can women best respond to the challenges of ownership? This chapter offers preliminary answers to these questions, including suggestions for enhancing the ability of women owners—especially daughters—to engage constructively with the businesses they inherit.

We focus on daughters serving in three distinctive roles: (1) as “operating owners” working in the family company and pursuing careers and leadership roles in management; (2) as “governing owners” serving as chairs or directors on the board of the business, or as members of other governance forums such as a family council, an owners’ council or the board of the family’s philanthropic foundation; and, (3) as “engaged owners” who are neither in operational or governance roles but are keenly connected to the enterprise’s success and continuity.

Our fundamental thesis is that the active participation of daughters as operating, governing or engaged owners enhances the continuity of the enterprise by expanding the pool of managerial and governing talent available to the business and by fostering inclusion, commitment and unity among the owners. We conclude by describing three interventions that can facilitate the dilemmas daughters face as owners and empower them to engage constructively with the family enterprise: (1) education, (2) mentorship and network support, and (3) well designed structures and roles.