Search results

This study explores how the family influences the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) process in immigrant businesses.

The paper draws on inductive multiple-case studies using 34 in-depth interviews. This paper relies on three cases of immigrant entrepreneurs originating from Mexico and Colombia that established firms in Sweden.

The results suggest that EO development trajectories vary in the presence of family roles (i.e. inspirers, backers and partners), resulting in the immigrant family business configurations of family-role-influenced proactiveness, risk-taking and innovation.

The immigrant family configurations drive three EO-enabling scenarios: (1) home-country framing, (2) family backing and (3) transnational translating. Immigrant family dynamics facilitate the development of EO over time through reciprocal interaction processes across contexts. This study indicates that, through family dynamics, EO develops as mutually interactive processes between the immigrant entrepreneur's family in the home and host countries.

This paper aims to add to the theorization of family dynamics and women’s entrepreneurship by examining women’s influence on decision-making in family businesses. Business decisions in family firms, in particular, are not free from family influence in terms of goals and strategies, and the role of women in decision-making processes is of particular interest. Consequently, the role of women entrepreneurs in family firms and their influence on business development requires a more fine-grained analysis of the family dynamic within the family and the business.

This study draws on a qualitative study and focuses on the life story narratives of nine women in rural family businesses in rural communities of Småland province in Sweden to empirically examine the decision-making processes. This region is known both for its entrepreneurial culture and traditional gender order. Based on the narrative accounts of women entrepreneurs in family businesses, the data analysis method is thematic, using a Gioia-inspired method.

The complexity of decision-making in rural family firms is further complicated in part due to a closeness with the rural community. Thus, a typology of three decision-making modes in family firms emerges an informal family-oriented mode, a semistructured family/employee consensus mode and a formal board mode with at least one nonfamily member. Moreover, the advantages, disadvantages and strategies that women use to influence decisions within the respective mode are outlined.

This work contributes to the study of women’s agency and its implications in family business and entrepreneurship in the rural context. The study implies that women’s agency shapes the (rural) entrepreneurship context and, likewise, the (rural) entrepreneurship context influences women’s agency. Hence, the author challenges the view of women as only caregivers and sheds light on the practices and processes behind the scenes of entrepreneurial family businesses.

This research investigates the introduction of accounting practices into small family businesses, based on socioemotional wealth theory.

A multiple-case study was conducted gathering data through interviews and documents (proprietary and public). The sample included six businesses (five Mexican and one American) from different manufacturing and service industries.

It was found that, although owners control the implementation of accounting practices, others (including family employees, non-family employees and external experts) at times propose practices. The owner’s control can be relaxed, or even eliminated, as the result of proposals from some family employees. However, the degree of influence of family employees is not linked to the closeness of the family relationship, but rather to the owners’ perceived competence of the family employee, indicating an interaction between competence and experience on one side, and family ties on the other.

First, the owners chose which documentary data to provide and who was accessible for interviews, potentially biasing findings. Second, the degree of influence family employees can exert might change over time. Third, the study included a limited number of interviews, which can increase the risk of bias. Finally, all firms studied were still managed by the founder. It is possible that small family businesses that have undergone a succession process might incorporate accounting practices differently.

Organizations promoting the implementation of managerial accounting practices should be aware that, in addition to the owner, some family employees and external experts could influence business practices. Accountants already providing accounting services to small family business are also a good source for proposing managerial accounting practices

This study contributes to theory in four ways. First, it expands socioemotional theory to include the perceived competence of the family employee as a potential moderator in the decision-making process. Second, it categorizes the actors who can influence managerial accounting practices in small family businesses. Third, it further refines the role of these actors, based on their degree of influence. Fourth, it proposes a model that describes the introduction of managerial accounting practices in small family business.

Over the past few years, several scholars have focused on green innovation in the agri-food industry. In line with this research stream, the purpose of this paper is to cover some unexplored areas regarding if stakeholder pressures have a positive influence on family engagement to implement green innovation practices and socially responsible practices.

By adopting a qualitative research methodology, mainly based on a multiple case study, this paper seeks to cover some unexplored areas regarding the understanding the relationship between stakeholders, family involvement and business practices in green innovation. The authors analyze eight cases from five Latin American countries selected, all are family firms focused on agricultural production.

Latin American family firms from agri-food industry, have a positive influence from internal/external stakeholder to implement green innovation initiatives and socially responsible practices, that result in short/long term business practices.

The originality of the proposed conceptual model stems from the need to overcome the previous theoretical models based on the stakeholder theory, which deals separately with internal/external influence over the firm.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the tax aggressiveness among family firms considering their different levels of family involvement. Based on the family influence on power, experience, and culture approach proposed by Astrachan et al. (2002), this study examines to what extent the heterogeneity among family firms generates distinctive (and unique resource) combinations of family involvement that explain different levels of tax aggressiveness.

A sample of 282 small and medium-sized family enterprises and a structural equation modeling approach have been used to study simultaneously the effects of family influence through the power, experience, and culture dimensions of tax aggressiveness in family firms.

The family influences the business’ tax aggressiveness in different ways. As such, the greater the family experience, by the incorporation of second and subsequent generations, the greater the tax aggressiveness; in contrast, greater family power in terms of firm ownership and management negatively affects tax aggressiveness. Additionally, greater alignment of the family and business culture does not exert a significant effect on tax behaviors of family firms.

Tax aggressiveness is a complex activity that should be managed from a global point of view in family firms. Managers should compensate for the negative influence of family governance on tax aggressiveness with the positive effect of the family generations in order to obtain proper and balanced tax management that contributes to the sustainability of family firms.

This study contributes to the understanding of tax behavior heterogeneities among family firms by going further than most research (usually based mainly on comparative ownership aspects between large, publicly quoted family and non-family firms), considering some other more representative factors of family small and medium-sized enterprises, where the influence of characteristics of family management, family generation, and family values can be the main determinants of the firm taxation policies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of non-economic factors on the financing decisions of family firms in the Middle East. To contextualize the study, the authors steer away from the traditional capital structure debate toward the choice of financing paradigm: conventional vs Islamic.

This study uses Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior due to its ability to delineate the influence of non-economic motivational factors on the financing decisions of family firms. This study also examines the influence of “familial stewardship (FS),” another non-economic factor which is highly relevant in a collectivistic context. The authors initially use SEM with Amos to analyze 115 surveys of family firm owner-managers. For deeper probing, the authors undertook an additional post hoc qualitative analysis of six case studies using semi-structured interviews.

The findings of this study suggest that owner-managers’ attitude toward Islamic finance plays a primary motivational role in influencing their intentions to use it. More importantly, the findings depict a significant influence of “FS” and subjective norm on the attitudes of owner-managers. This implies that financing decisions which involve religious beliefs are directly influenced by the decision maker’s personal attitude, which, in turn, is significantly influenced by familial and social pressures.

This study fills a gap in the family-firm financing literature by suggesting that when choosing religion-related financial products, attitude plays a far more significant role than other motivational factors. This study also contributes to the “familiness” area of research by empirically demonstrating that FS has a significant influence on owner-managers’ attitude toward financing choices.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the impact of Israeli children on family decision making.

Two studies were used, replicating two different approaches that have been used to measure children's influence with US children. In study one, a survey was given to each parent, whereas, in study two, a survey was given to each parent and their child.

Findings indicate that Israeli children have a similar influence to US children, suggesting that, overall, Israeli children exercise quite strong influence on family decision making. This was the case when rated by children, as well as by both mothers and fathers.

Two main ways to improve on this kind of research in the future are using a non‐convenience sample and collecting data from multiple countries for cross‐cultural comparisons.

One important implication of the findings is that children across cultures tend to have higher influence for products that are more relevant for them; therefore, marketers should concentrate their efforts primarily on the children.

An important contribution of this research is that it examines children's influence on family decision making in cultures different from the USA. For example, Israel is less individualistic, more uncertainty‐avoiding, and less power‐distant than the USA.

While several studies have examined the roles of husbands and wives in making decisions about products, few have examined the impact of children. This article reports the results of a 1985 study of the influence of children on families. The study examines children's influence in each of four stages of the purchase decision, for 25 products, and by age of the children. For child‐centered (e.g., toys, children's clothing, food) and child‐used products or services (e.g., vacations, restaurant choices, outside entertainment), the study shows that children are perceived as influential by most households. Older children are perceived as more influential than younger children for nearly all the products studied. The study concludes that “family” decision making is quite different from “husband‐wife” decision making.

Reports research on the degree to which UK adolescents feel they have an impact on decision making within their families, and the extent to which adolescents and parents agree or disagree with the adolescent’s perceived influence when purchasing products;most previous research has concentrated on children rather than adolescents. Discusses the concept of consumer socialisation, i.e. the process by which young people acquire skills, knowledge and attitude relevant to their functioning as consumers; although parents are the foremost influences in this, there is also reverse socialisation, where children use their product knowledge to influence parents’ decisions. Distinguishes between socio‐oriented and concept‐oriented parental communication: the latter is likely to increase the child’s influence on decision‐making. Outlines demographic changes, such as the greater number of one‐parent households and two‐income families, which have produced “time‐poor” parents: the result is that children and adolescents now exercise a greater influence on purchasing decisions. Tests two hypotheses: that parents and adolescents disagree in their perceived ratings of adolescents’ product category decision influence; and that male and female adolescents’ perceived influences differ across a range of product categories. Concludes that parents and adolescents generally agree, but that there is some degree of difference between male and female perceived influence ratings, in the categories of large purchases and food.

Although conflict resolution in family decision‐making processes has been a key topic in consumer behaviour research, very few studies have considered the impact of children on decision outcomes. Observation is used in this study to determine the relative influence of family members and the dominant decision‐making strategies that are used. Observational data are derived from videotaped recordings of family interactions during a simulated decision‐making situation. The paper begins with an overview of the decision‐making strategies used during the conflict resolution stage, discusses how the formation of coalitions influences the decision, and considers the role of gender and gender composition of children in family decision making. This is followed by the results, which indicate how these factors influence the family decision‐making process for nuclear families with two adolescent children.