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Learning in organizations is well-recognized as a key determinant of innovation and success in competitive markets, and a rich literature examines learning mechanisms in large-sized and professionally-run organizations. Relatively little is known about the learning processes in family-run firms, most of whom are small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) led by a single family SME owner-manager connected in a family network. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate how family SME owner-managers engage in learning and how those learning processes are affected by family SME-specific characteristics.

Using pragmatic learning theory as an interpretive lens, this study conducts a qualitative multi-case study involving 61 interviews in family SMEs with family SME owner-managers, family members, employees and customers.

The within- and cross-case analysis helps identify the mechanisms, barriers and enablers of learning and innovation in family SMEs. The study develops and pinpoints the family owner managers’ “functional overload” as a major barrier to learning and employee empowerment, family-members’ support and customer feedback as critical resources in overcoming such functional overload. Yet, these resources turn out to be major amplifiers of functional overload in later phases of the learning process, thus impeding learning and innovation.

The study provides novel insights into learning processes and innovation within family SMEs, outlines the double-edged involvement of family members, employees and customers for learning processes, and provides nuance to pragmatic learning theory.

Both Hungary and Germany belong to the old-world wine-producing countries and have long winemaking traditions. This paper aims at exploring and comparing online branding strategies of family SME (small and medium sized enterprises) wineries at Lake Balaton (Hungary) and Lake Constance (Germany), as two wine regions with similar geographic characteristics.

This paper, based on a total sample of 37 family wineries, 15 at Lake Balaton and 22 at Lake Constance, investigates the differences in brand identity on the website, brand image in social media and online communication channels deployed in both wine regions. The study applies a qualitative methodology using MaxQDA software for conducting content analysis of texts in websites and social media. Descriptive statistics and t-test were conducted to compare the usage of different communication channels and determine statistical significance.

At Lake Balaton, the vineyard, the winery and the family, while at Lake Constance, the lake itself and the grape are highlighted regarding family winery brand identity. The customer-based brand image of Hungarian family wineries emphasizes wine, food and service, with the predominant use of Facebook. In the German family wineries, the focus of brand identity is on wine, friendliness and taste and includes more extensive usage of websites.

The paper deploys a novel methodology, both in terms of tools used as well as geographic focus to uncover online branding patterns of family wineries, thereby providing implications for wine and tourism industries at lake regions. It compares the share of selected most-used words in the overall text in websites and in social media, and presents the key findings from this innovative approach.

Owing to its specificities, the family small and medium enterprise (SME) shows a particular behavior as for the creation, development, sharing, protection and transmission of knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to study the specificities of the processes of knowledge creation and development in family firms.

Through a questionnaire, hypotheses of the model were tested. The study is based on 118 firms belonging to various industries. After evaluating the reliability and validity of the items through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, the model was tested through structural equation modeling (LISREL).

The model retained induces the following conclusions. Internationalization knowledge positively influences internationalization degree of the firm. The conservatism of family SME does not directly influence the level of internationalization knowledge. The influence of conservatism on internationalization knowledge is exerted only through the decisional dimension of independence orientation. The independence orientation of family SME, then with its two dimensions simultaneously (decisional and resource independence), does not significantly influence internationalization knowledge. Contrary to decisional independence which influences indirectly the degree of internationalization (through the intermediation of internationalization knowledge), resource independence influences directly the dependant variable. The mediation of internationalization knowledge is thus not totally proven. Social networking positively influences the amount of internationalization knowledge.

A major weakness is the absence of a synchronic approach as the dependent and independent variables are measured at the same moment. A more longitudinal approach would be valuable to analyze the causal relationships between the independent variables and internationalization knowledge and internationalization degree. A second limitation is that the characteristics of the sample may limit the generalizability of the results.

To the author's knowledge, the paper is the first of its kind to examine the knowledge‐based processes in family businesses.

The increasingly competitive manufacturing sector has made innovation crucial for the continued survival of family-owned SMEs. However, family firm owners are highly heterogenous and their diverse characteristics influence their approach to innovation. The purpose of this paper is to provide solutions to two heterogeneity related innovation problems: first, the failure of generic innovation policy advice to address the specific types of family firm owners; and second, the difficulty for owners in understanding how their innovation approach compares to their competitors. The solution is to create a taxonomy of family firm owner-innovators which creates innovator types. This taxonomy addresses these two problems: first, the taxonomy enables policy advice to be tailored to a particular innovator types; and second, the taxonomy allows owners to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their particular approach to innovation.

The approach is to develop a taxonomy through exploratory factor analysis (n=1,284) and firm owner interviews (n=27) in a mixed methods study. Socio-emotional wealth theory interprets the findings.

The findings present a taxonomy of family firm innovators which contains five types: the spontaneous radical, the statist altruist, the patient opportunist, the curious traveller and the insular denier.

There are two major limitations: first, a taxonomy is static and does not include the temporal dimension of innovation which can change according to the firm lifecycle stage and, by implication, the changing preferences of a maturing firm owner; and second, the mixed methods approach of using two data sets which themselves used differing definitions of “family firm” has introduced the possibility that the constructs developed from the quantitative study may not have the precision or clarity of a study that uses a single data set with a single definition.

The practitioner implications from the research stem from the diagnostic potential of the taxonomy. SME family firm owners can establish their innovation approach by using the taxonomy to decide which type of innovator they are and by adopting an innovation approach that counterbalances the weaknesses of their type.

The social implications are to improve the innovation potential of the family firm community by offering practical support to their innovation activities.

The originality of the research is in its contribution to knowledge on the role of ownership type in directing the innovation approach of SME family firms. The value of the research is in offering a theoretically informed original taxonomy that is of both academic and practical value.

This paper seeks to extend knowledge on the impact of different marketing capabilities on various measures of organisational performance in the context of family‐run small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs).

Aspects regarding marketing capabilities in family‐owned SMEs and their impact on superior performance are identified and briefly discussed according to the existing literature. Then, quantitative research is presented followed by a discussion of the findings. The paper ends with the conclusion, managerial implications, limitations and lines for future research.

The results of the study show the relevance of marketing capabilities for product differentiation to gain stakeholders' satisfaction. Other marketing capabilities related to marketing planning and pricing have a positive impact on financial performance.

Different marketing capabilities have a different impact on various measures of performance. The nature of the marketing capabilities under consideration determines whether their main impact is on financial performance rather than on stakeholders' satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the training and learning strategies adopted by family businesses in Ireland.

In order to implement the study a database of family businesses was compiled. A number of sources were used to compile the database. Primary data from a stratified random sample of independent unquoted businesses were collected. Data were collected from 121 family businesses using a postal questionnaire.

The key findings of this study are that family SMEs appear to prefer an informal learning strategy than a formal strategy and family SMEs are hindered by the lack of financial resources so as to enable learning and training to occur within the business.

This study used a single‐respondent, self‐administered questionnaire. Future research should incorporate analysing other members of the family business – family and non‐family members – so as to get a “wider” understanding of learning and training in family businesses in Ireland.

This paper presents original findings in a highly relevant, but under‐researched field – family businesses in Ireland, the issue of learning and training of family businesses.

The purpose of this paper is to use the socio‐emotional wealth perspective to examine how the level of family involvement reduces the propensity to use incentives to non‐family managers in small to medium‐sized enterprises (SME) family firms.Design/methodology/approach – Primary data were collected from US firms. To evaluate the hypotheses, a logit model was employed on a final sample of 2,019 small family firms.

Results suggest that family influence and control and intra‐family transgenerational succession intentions are negatively related to the propensity to use incentives. Also, the interaction effects of family management and ownership reduce the propensity to use incentives.

The paper’s empirical findings imply that despite their potential economic benefits, family involvement reduces the probability that incentives will be offered to non‐family managers because such incentives are perceived to be inconsistent with the preservation of the family’s socioemotional wealth. Also, choices that reflect a preference for socioemotional wealth may not only be a function of decision framing and loss aversion but also by the size of the economic pay‐offs that might be available. The findings suggest that non‐family managers in SME family firms may be affected by a family’s preoccupation with its socioemotional endowments. Thus, the authors expect that this paper provides further avenues to explore the decisions about attaining non‐economic and economic goals and other strategic issues in family firms.

In this study, we investigated the dilemma of devising an operational family business definition in the SME context. The existing family business literature mostly agrees with the validity of a theoretical model called F-PEC, which identifies family businesses by evaluating three dimensions: power, experience, and culture. Nonetheless, empirical studies on family SMEs still use just one or a few elements with many different thresholds to operationally define family SMEs, highlighting an unsolved definitional divergence among scholars, which limits the possibility of investigating the potential effects of family attributes on firms’ goals, structures, processes, and performance.

Employing ancestry searching, online databases, and issue-by-issue searches from two decades (1990–2019), we analyzed 255 empirical studies that specified a family business’s operational definition (despite posing different research questions) and used a sample of small-sized and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Results showed ownership and governance/management are the most used elements in the operational definitions provided in the literature to date, but that there still is not a universally adopted operational definition of family SMEs in use today.

This paper is one of the first to comprehensively analyze and review the operationalized use of family SME definitions in the literature.

This study aims to understand the influence of R&D intensity and ownership concentration on performance of Indian technology SMEs, at the intersection of “value creation” perspective of corporate governance and country cultural context in innovation.

Cross-sectional data of 264 Indian technology SMEs have been employed to probe the impact of ownership and R&D intensity on market performance of the technology SMEs.

This study does not find support of individual influence of R&D intensity on SME performance. The authors find support for the “value creation” hypothesis of corporate governance in Indian technology SME context. This study finds that interaction of promoter's ownership concentration and R&D intensity has a positive influence on the performance of Indian technology SMEs.

This study has deployed cross-sectional data. Future studies can examine the “value creation” hypothesis based on panel data for a long-run understanding. Ownership can be further segregated into different categories of ownership in future studies.

This study underscores on distinct necessity in the concentrated ownership in the context of Indian technology SMEs. The findings of the study may encourage policymakers to focus on the “value creation” of the technology SMEs than “value protection.”

This study aims to understand the market value of R&D practice of SMEs. The findings of this study establish that R&D intensity individually may not have any significant influence on SME performance. R&D intensity coupled with concentrated ownership can significantly increase SME performance. Thus, this study identifies factors that can help in SME innovation and growth options. Additionally, this study advocates for the fact concentrated ownership in technology SMEs of India by establishing the link with SME performance.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between being members of social media business networks and SME performance by comparing business performance between family-owned SMEs that are members and non-members of social media business networks.

The analysis empirically draws on cross-sectional data of 9,292 English and Welsh family-owned SMEs from the UK's Government Small Business Survey 2015. Propensity Score Matching (PSM) is applied to control for selection bias and differences in firm characteristics before comparing business performance, measured in terms of annual turnover, sales-growth intention and innovation between family-owned SMEs that are members and non-members of social media business networks.

The findings show that family-owned SMEs that are members of social media business networks are more likely to have higher prior turnover and to grow their sales than non-members. Also, they are more likely to report being innovative in products and processes than non-members. The empirical results acknowledge the importance of online business networks and digital social capital on enhanced family-owned business performance.

This paper is the first to explore the comparative analysis of business performance between family-owned SMEs that are members and non-members of social media business networks. This paper is important for the development of family business research by providing a comprehensive evidence-based analysis regarding the importance of online business networks to improve family-owned business performance, given the significant contribution of digital business activities to the UK economy.