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The purpose of this paper is to explore the internationalization process of small and medium family-owned businesses (FOBs). The authors strive to explain the extent to which family business CEOs identify a signal in either the domestic or international environment for internationalization as a viable business opportunity.

The authors rely on signal detection theory to develop a conceptual model that explains the cognitive process inducing the CEO-founder of an FOB to discover and exploit an opportunity in the international market.

The conceptual model proposes that constraints in a family-firm’s domestic market, as well as opportunities in the foreign market act, as signal strength. However, family business CEO-founders’ centrality and inward orientation might lead them to ignore a signal by generating noise and reducing the motivation to collect further information concerning the trustworthiness of the signal.

The model is conceptual; future research should strive for a potential way to operationalize the cognitive process described herein. In addition, the theoretical argument has been developed in the context of family firms wherein the founder plays a pivotal role. Future research may extend the theoretical arguments to those family firms that are at an advanced stage of development.

The study reconciles conflicting findings concerning the internationalization of FOBs. In doing so, the authors employ an interdisciplinary approach and develop a conceptual model that sheds additional light on the cognitive processes underlying internationalization decisions among founder-centered family firms.

Drawing from job characteristic theory and person-environment fit theory, the authors examine the relationship between job characteristics needs-supplies fit/misfit and affective organizational commitment across countries and how humane orientation moderates this relationship.

To test the authors’ hypotheses, the authors conducted a number of multilevel polynomial regressions with three-dimensional surface analyses on a sample of 19,049 employees from 24 countries drawn from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) 2005.

Results indicate that job characteristics needs-supplies fit is positively related to affective organizational commitment, while job characteristics needs-supplies misfit is negatively related to affective organizational commitment. In addition, results reveal that humane orientation is relevant to increasing affective organizational commitment when external rewards job characteristics needs are higher than external rewards job characteristics supplies.

These results weaken the universality of job characteristics and call for a departure from a one-size-fits-all approach to human resources.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between supervisor’s overall justice and affective organizational commitment. The authors further study how this relationship is moderated by subordinates’ overall justice.

The authors conducted hierarchical regression analyses on a sample of supervisor–subordinate matched data.

Supervisors’ overall justice was positively related to supervisors’ affective organizational commitment, and subordinates’ overall justice moderated these relationships.

The main limitation of the study was its cross-sectional nature.

Results emphasized the importance of the interaction between supervisors’ and subordinates’ perceived overall justice, which suggests that employers should focus on treating all individuals fairly in the workplace.

The study contributes to the organizational justice literature by providing empirical evidence using a supervisor–subordinate matched sample, suggesting that overall justice is important to understanding individuals’ affective organizational commitment. Using fairness heuristic theory, the study explores the interaction effect of subordinates’ overall justice on the relationship between supervisors’ overall justice and affective organizational commitment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between congruence between employee and employer psychological contract fulfillment and commitment. The authors further studied how the relationship is moderated by distributive justice.

The authors conducted polynomial regression analyses with response surface methodology on two Korean samples.

Congruence between employee and employer psychological contract fulfillment was positively related to affective commitment and occupational commitment. Distributive justice moderated these relationships.

The main limitation was common method bias as a result of the cross-sectional nature of the study designs.

Employers must be vigilant not only with regard to fulfilling employees’ psychological contracts but also to doing this fairly.

The authors studied the interaction effect of distributive justice on the relationship between psychological contract congruence and commitment in Korea.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between available slack and firm performance in Italian family-controlled public firms (FCPFs) from 2006 to 2010. In addition the authors analyze the moderating effects of specific board structure variables on the relationship between slack resources and firms’ performance.

A pooled cross-section of family and non-family publicly traded firms was drawn from COMPUSTAT global and matched with corporate governance and family firm variables hand-collected from companies’ standard profiles from Italy's primary stock exchange, Borsa Italiana. The hypotheses were tested using the feasible generalized least square method in order to analyze the data from 583 firms-observations, controlling for self-selection bias and reverse causality.

The study shows that FCPFs with available slack experience less than proportionate increases in performance, suggesting a concave curvilinear slack-performance relationship. However, the slack-performance relationship is contingent on board independence and board size: greater board independence and larger boards in FCPFs relate to higher performance when the firm lacks or has too much slack available. The findings suggest that a balanced approach of oversight and stewardship helps families to make better resources allocation, to the benefit of outside shareholders as well.

The slack measure was restricted to available slack. Future studies can expand this research inquiry with other forms of slack, including potential and recoverable slack. The sample included only publicly traded family and non-family firms, thereby limiting the generalizability of the findings to other types of family enterprises. Lastly, the results only attend to the slack-performance relationship by controlling whether the firm's performance is below or above the industry average.

Policy makers and non-family stakeholders may rely on the findings better understand the factors that can alter the family's propensity for risks and its related strategic decisions in the Italian context. Procedures to fully monitor family management's decision making or, at the other extreme, to give the family free reign are likely to disadvantage families, their business, and their outside stakeholders.

The study reconciles the debate on the role of slack on firms’ performance by proposing a curvilinear relationship. The study is one of only a handful of research inquiries centrally addressing the role of slack in family-owned businesses, and the only analysis focussed on Italian FCPFs.