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This paper aims to investigate the impact of family involvement in ownership and governance on the quality of internal auditing.

Leveraging a hand-collected data set of listed family firms from 2014 to 2020, this study uses regression analyses to investigate the impact of family ownership, family involvement on the board, family CEO and the generational stage of the family business on the quality of internal auditing.

The results provide evidence that family ownership is positively associated with the quality of internal auditing, while later generational stages of family businesses have the opposite effect. Additional analyses reveal that the presence of a sustainability board sub-committee moderates the relationship between generational stages of family businesses and the quality of internal auditing function.

This paper does not consider country-institutional factors and other potentially family-related antecedents or governance factors that may affect the quality of internal auditing.

The results are informative for investors and non-family stakeholders interested in understanding under which conditions family-related factors influence the quality of internal auditing functions.

This study offers fresh evidence regarding the relationship between family-related factors and the quality of internal auditing and board sub-committees that moderate such a relationship in family businesses.

Absorptive capacity (AC), the ability to leverage external knowledge for innovation, helps explain the mixed findings on family firms' (FFs) innovation performance. Our research focuses on the chief executive officer (CEO)’s role – whether family or non-family and founding or later generation – in influencing AC. We also explore how firm size and environmental dynamism affect these relationships, offering insights into varying AC levels among FFs.

Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models were estimated to test the hypotheses using a sample of 364 FFs in Spain.

FFs’ AC is greater when the CEO is a family member, and even more so when the family CEO belongs to the founding family generation. While AC diminishes in larger FFs, this effect is mitigated when the CEO is a family member. The predicted moderating effect of environmental dynamics is not supported by the analyses.

This paper adds insights about the drivers of heterogeneity in innovation among FFs, addressing recent calls for more nuanced views of how family members drive the strategic behavior of the business and incorporating considerations of different types of FFs based on the identity of the firm CEO. The results overall support the theoretical claims and also open up important questions for future studies.

This study investigates the relationship between board gender diversity (BGD) and the time to Initial Public Offering (IPO), which stands as an entrepreneurially risky choice, particularly challenging in family firms. We also investigate the moderating role of family ownership dispersion (FOD).

We draw on an integrated theoretical framework bringing together the upper echelons theory and the socio-emotional wealth (SEW) perspective and on hand-collected data on a sample of Italian family IPOs that occurred in the period 2000–2020. We employ ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and alternative model estimations to test our hypotheses.

BGD positively affects the time to IPO, thus, it increases the time required to go public. FOD negatively moderates this relationship. Our findings remain robust with different measures for BGD, FOD, and family business definition as well as with different econometric models.

The article develops literature on family firms and IPO and it enriches the academic debate about gender and IPOs in family firms. It adds to studies addressing the determinants of the time to IPO by incorporating gender diversity and the FOD into the discussion. Finally, it contributes to research on women and outcomes in family firms.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether and how inter-firm cooperation and firm age moderate the relationship between family ownership and productivity.

We first estimate the total factor productivity (TFP) of a large sample of Italian firms observed over the period 2010–2018 and then apply a Poisson random effects model.

TFP is, on average, higher for non-family firms (non-FFs) than for FF. Furthermore, inter-organizational cooperation and firm age mitigate the negative effect of family ownership. In detail, it is found that belonging to a network acts as a moderator in different ways according to firm age. Indeed, young FFs underperform non-FF peers, although the TFP gap decreases with age. In contrast, the benefits of a formal network are high for older FFs, suggesting that an age-related learning process is at work.

The study provides evidence that FFs can outperform non-FFs when they move away from Socio-Emotional Wealth-centered reference points and exploit knowledge flows arising from high levels of social capital. In the case of mature FFs, networking is a driver of TFP, allowing them to acquire external resources. Since FFs often do not have sufficient in-house knowledge and resources, they must be aware of the value of business cooperation. While preserving the familiar identity of small companies, networks grant FFs the competitive and scale advantages of being large.

Despite the wide but ambiguous body of research on the performance gap between FFs and non-FFs, little is known about the role of FFs’ heterogeneity. This study has proven successful in detecting age as a factor in heterogeneity, specifically to explain the network effect on the link between ownership and TFP. Based on a representative sample, the study provides a solid framework for FFs, policymakers and academic research on family-owned companies.

This paper aims to examine how organisational values affect diversity in terms of different competencies in rural family Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Recruiting a diverse workforce in rural family SMEs can be particularly difficult due to the prevalence of internal family values and the lack of available local specialised competencies. A deficiency of diversity in employment and competence acquisition and development can create problems, as it often prevents rural family SMEs from recruiting employees with a wide variety of qualifications and skills.

The study takes on a multi-case method of Swedish rural family SMEs, applying a qualitative content analysis approach. In total, 20 in-depth structured interviews are conducted with rural family SME owners and 2 industries were investigated and compared – the tourism and the manufacturing industries.

Rural family SMEs lack long-term employment strategies, and competence diversity does not appear to be a priority for rural family SMEs, as they often have prematurely decided who they will hire rather than what competencies are needed for their long-term business development. It is more important to keep the team of employees tight and the family spirit present than to include competence diversity and mixed qualifications in the employment acquisition and development.

Contrary to prior research, our findings indicate that rural family SMEs apply short-term competence diversity strategies rather than long-term prospects regarding competence acquisition and management, due to their family values and rural setting, which strictly narrows the selection of employees and competencies. Also, a general reluctance towards competence diversity is identified, which originates from the very same family values and rural context.

This study aims to examine how couplepreneurs foster an entrepreneurial mindset in their kids.

A qualitative research approach with semi-structured interviews was used as the data collection technique. Narrative analysis was conducted on a sample of 20 couplepreneurs in Mthatha, South Africa.

Narratives of how couplepreneurs foster an entrepreneurial mindset in their kids included purchasing toys and games for kids that encourage entrepreneurship; competition and team activities among kids that are related to entrepreneurship; the piggy bank; encouraging kids to read entrepreneurial books; and kid entrepreneur showcases.

Sample size challenges are a notable limitation, including research being conducted in only one province of South Africa. Caution is advised when attempting to generalise the results to other contexts.

Understanding the strategies used by couplepreneurs to instil an entrepreneurial mindset in children can help parents to influence and encourage their children's entrepreneurial growth, resulting in more creative and innovative people who make a positive contribution to society, economy and the community.

While there is a body of literature on couple entrepreneurship, there are shortcomings in studies examining how coupleprenuers in African countries instil an entrepreneurial mindset in their children. As a result, this study aims to complement the current corpus of African literature on entrepreneurship, particularly in the context of South Africa.

This study aims to solve the realistic dilemma between the importance of entrepreneurship and the high rate of entrepreneurial failure, and to point out the direction of subsequent research.

The paper takes the form of a literature review.

Entrepreneurial activities involve multiple dimensions. Entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial teams will be affected by multiple factors when starting a business, and sufficient attention should be paid to both the factors within the group and the factors outside the group such as institutional quality and market competition. High entrepreneurial failure rate is an essential characteristic of entrepreneurial activities, while solving this problem requires entrepreneurs to maintain passion, clarify their own motivation, improve their learning abilities and adopt appropriate entrepreneurial strategies to improve entrepreneurial performance. Meanwhile, it also urgent to build entrepreneurial teams with common goals, heterogeneous knowledge structure, outstanding learning ability, solid mutual trust, strong social influence and social capital. Successful entrepreneurship should adhere to the perspective of openness and cooperation. It should not only actively strengthen international cooperation but also fully adapt to the country’s system and culture. Sustainable growth of entrepreneurial enterprises requires not only stable commercial revenue but also responsibility to society, which in turn leads to a good reputation and high social recognition.

The authors hope this review can provide some insightful viewpoints for deepening the theoretical system of entrepreneurship, improving the success rate of entrepreneurship and promoting the sustainable growth of enterprises.

Further research can be carried out on the promotion of business growth by entrepreneurship at the micro level in the following aspects: analyze functional mechanism between innovation and entrepreneurship; entrepreneurship research by integrating multiple institutional contexts and cultural traditions; consider the changes in emerging technologies on entrepreneurial activities; diversified mechanism between entrepreneurship education and business growth.

Given the limited understanding of the process of transgenerational entrepreneurship and that knowledge is a fundamental antecedent of entrepreneurial endeavors, this study aims to shed light on how entrepreneurial families (EFs) nurture entrepreneurship across generations, which knowledge is required within the EF to spur new entrepreneurial activities, and how is this knowledge acquired.

Considering the paucity of empirical evidence on the topic under investigation and the related exploratory nature of this study, the authors adopted a qualitative approach by conducting a case study on an Italian wine-making family business.

The case analysis reveals that EF members are required to acquire different types of knowledge at different generational stages to spur new entrepreneurial activities, specifically technical knowledge in the second generation and business knowledge in the third generation. Moreover, the data analysis shows two mechanisms, namely, trust among generations and role separation, that, during both generational transitions, enabled and empowered the younger generations to exploit their knowledge to explore entrepreneurial opportunities and engage in new entrepreneurial activities.

This study provides novel insights into the role of knowledge in transgenerational entrepreneurship, particularly looking at knowledge acquired by EF members across generations. Accordingly, this research contributes to the literature streams of transgenerational entrepreneurship, knowledge management in family businesses and broader knowledge management research.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote working (RW) has emerged as a viable alternative to working employees in general and knowledge workers in particular. However, previous researchers have worked on the concept, development and facilitation of RW since the 1970s. Therefore, this study aims to review the existing literature on RW to ascertain the evolution of the concept in the business and management domain and provide for requisite arguments to extend the settings for future research agendas.

The authors based this study on a bibliometric analysis of articles (n = 349) retrieved from the Web of Science database published between January 1990 and October 2021. The authors have used a bibliometric toolbox comprising performance analysis, science mapping and network analysis in various software namely, VOSviewer, Gephi and Biblioshiny package in R.

The study’s results accentuated important themes like work–life balance, strengthening digital infrastructure, performance and productivity, hybrid work models and well-being and clustered them under four heads with proposed future research questions.

The study is based on a single database; the authors have used an extensive but not exhaustive list of keywords to retrieve the articles. The analysis employs certain threshold limits while using the science mapping technique.

This study would enable managers and academics to comprehensively understand remote work and offer logical implications to appreciate its nuances.

This study is unique as it recognizes the intellectual structure in the existing literature on RW and traces the advancements and exponential growth post-COVID-19. The authors recapitulated the literature as network analysis of the RW facilitation model comprising the antecedents, outcomes, mediators and moderators.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between owner-manager or leader’s ambidextrous leadership style and its effect on human resource management (HRM) practices, contextual ambidexterity and knowledge-intensive small- and medium-enterprises (SMEs) strategic agility.

This study presents an in-depth qualitative case study analysis of two knowledge-intensive SMEs from India’s information technology and health-care products industry serving a range of global clients. Using the theoretical lenses of empowerment-focused HRM practices, ambidextrous leaders, contextual ambidexterity and strategic agility, semi-structured interview data of leaders, managers and employees of the case organizations were analysed. Through a two-staged analytical process, we abductively developed a novel conceptual framework at the intersection of the above theoretical lenses.

The findings suggest that the knowledge-intensive SME’s strategic agility, ambidexterity and empowerment-focussed HRM approach was influenced by the owner-manager or leader’s ambidextrous leadership style and their philosophy towards managing people and had a positive impact in creating a culture of trust, participation, risk-taking and openness, and led to delivering innovative products and services as well as several positive employee-level outcomes.

Recent literature reviews on HRM In SMEs highlight several gaps, including the impact of owner-manager or leader’s philosophy of managing people in shaping HRM practices and employee outcomes. This paper thus adds to the existing literature on HRM and knowledge-intensive SMEs.