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The role of family business staffing practices in their ultimate success remains largely unknown. The purpose of this paper is to test the notion that firms with greater family essence manifest their commitment by leveraging referrals as a recruitment source, which in turn is associated with higher performance. The hypothesized model posits that reduced agency costs from hiring through owner referral utilization (ORU) provide high-family essence firms with stronger performance.

The study draws upon a sample of 194 small and medium-sized family business owners.

Findings from OLS regression and the PROCESS model in SPSS support the hypothesis that recruiting nonfamily employees from referrals helps lessen agency conflicts and serves as an intervening mechanism in the relationship between family firm essence and firm performance.

This study draws on agency theory to shed light on how family firms successfully bring nonfamily employees into the fold despite their human resource limitations. The results extend theory on family businesses by demonstrating that those with higher degrees of family essence are more likely to attract applicants via ORU. Leveraging this recruiting practice allows family businesses to hire nonfamily employees who share the values and goals of the family firm, thus lowering agency costs and fostering higher performance. More broadly, the findings offer insight into the role of staffing practices in family firm success.

The effect of playfulness climate on employees in firms has been the subject of an increasing number of studies in recent years. Given the growing number of businesses that have incorporated playfulness into their operations, it is possible to enhance the task performance and innovative performance of the younger generation of workers by rationally managing playfulness, particularly when it comes to that aspect of the workplace. Based on the conservation of resources theory, this study aims to investigate how the playfulness climate in organizations influences the change self-efficacy of the millennial workers and how to enhance their task performance and innovation performance.

The authors used a quantitative approach to test the relationship between the hypotheses. The survey population for this study consisted of the millennial workers in the computer sector who are involved in research and development in China. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the built mediation model empirically over the course of the study's three rounds of data collection, each separated by one month. Through the collection of paired questions for leadership and their subordinates, 424 valid questionnaires were obtained.

The examination of the questionnaire results supports the study's theoretical hypothesis, which states that when millennial workers sense a more playfulness work environment, it will encourage them to develop a sense of change self-efficacy. Additionally, they will be better able to handle work-related responsibilities and come up with innovative ideas as a result of change self-efficacy, which would eventually enhance the task performance and innovation performance of millennial employees.

By introducing the mediation of change self-efficacy, this study expands on the application of the conservation of resources theory. The research on the performance of millennial employees is complemented and enhanced by investigating the relationship between the playfulness climate and employees' task performance and innovation performance from the perspective of their sense of change self-efficacy. This study also reveals that managers should foster a positive and playfulness environment in their workplaces in order to manage the performance of millennial employees.

The purpose of the study is to unveil the key role of family social capital (FSC) as a driver for transgenerational entrepreneurship (TE) in the specific contexts of challenged successor-driven entrepreneurship.

The paper adopts a multi-case study methodology. Guided by three theoretical propositions, three TE case studies are analyzed. Drawing on ten in-depth interviews with at least three different informants from each intra-family succession case study, evidence about this particularly complex phenomenon was obtained.

The paper highlights the effect of FSC as the key familiness driver to leverage challenged successor-driven entrepreneurship. The paper underscores the systemic and dynamic network of multiple exchanges required to construct successor’s own pool of knowledge resources and to support familiness and thus the competitive advantage of the family firm (FF).

Different scenarios are illustrated, and specific lessons are provided for successors and families that face TE opposition in intra-family succession, regarding the restoration of damaged FSC and involving non-family stakeholders in the successor-driven entrepreneurship. In these cases, opposition to successor-driven entrepreneurship may help to develop successor’s leadership abilities.

Focusing on a specific intra-family succession context where successor-driven entrepreneurial initiatives face stakeholder opposition, the paper highlights the specific role played by FSC in the successor knowledge construction in specific contexts of challenged intra-family succession.

The paper investigates whether a family firm's control context is directly associated with a manager's stewardship attitude or whether this relationship is mediated by the manager's perception with respect to the fairness of the control processes.

The authors have sent a survey to family businesses in Brazil. The authors tested the hypotheses with the data collected from 141 responding family and nonfamily managers with the use of structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses (SmartPLS).

The authors find that more participative and more formal controls are associated with higher procedural justice perceptions. Zooming in on the types of control, namely forward-looking action controls, like target setting (TS), and backward-looking results controls, like performance measurement (PM), the authors observe that TS is significantly positively associated with stewardship identification through a manager's procedural justice perceptions for both control characteristics (partial mediation for participative TS and full mediation for formal TS). PM on the other hand is only significantly directly related to a stewardship identification if it is of a participative character. In addition, the authors find a significant moderating effect of family affiliation, increasing the strength of the association between PM procedural justice and stewardship identification for nonfamily managers.

Prior literature focused on discussing stewardship attitudes and behaviors in family firms, but few provided empirical evidence that a stewardship attitude in a family firm is associated with contextual factors, like the design of controls in family firms in combination with a manager's individual perception of family firm's process factors.

Although succession planning can be important for the continuity of family firms, not all family business have the opportunity to engage in this planning. Sometimes, these organizations face crisis events that may trigger an intra-family succession. However, what happens when there is an unplanned succession? Are family businesses doomed to fail? This project aims to explore unplanned successions that are triggered by crisis and the impact that this can have on post-succession financial performance. The authors also examine the moderating role of successor characteristics (i.e. education and previous work experience) on this relationship.

The ideas were tested using data from 151 publicly listed family firms in China.

The findings indicate that having a crisis driven intra-family succession does not always result in lower post-succession performance. It is only successions that are triggered by market crises that negatively impact financial performance after the unplanned succession. In these instances, the education and previous experience of the successor moderate the negative relationship between market crisis succession and financial performance such that having more experience and a college education diminishes these negative effects on performance.

The results point to the importance of the preparation of the next generation in helping family firms navigate unplanned successions. The findings indicate that education and previous work experience of the successor can help a family firm manage a crisis.

This study continues to build the understanding about unplanned successions and the important role that successor preparation can have for the success of the family firm.

We investigate the effect of the adoption of formal board structure and board processes on firm performance in Colombian family firms, in a context where firms can choose specific aspects of board structure and processes. We deploy insights from the behavioral governance perspective to develop arguments about how family businesses may choose board elements based on their degree of control over the firm (absolute control or less), and its effect on firm performance.

We use an unbalanced data panel of 404 firm-year observations. The data was obtained from the annual financial and corporate governance reports of 62 Colombian stock-issuing firms for the period 2008–2014 – due to change in regulation, data could not be added beyond 2014. Panel data technique with random effects was used.

The results show that board structure is positively associated with financial performance, however, this relationship is negative in businesses where family has absolute control. We also found that there is a negative association between board processes and performance, but positive association in family-controlled businesses.

Our research contributes to research streams on effects of family control in firm choices and on the interactive effect of governance choices and institutional context and more generally how actors interact (rather than react) with their institutional context.

The study aims to analyze for the Spanish context the influence of the involvement of several generations in the firm's management on family firm internationalization. The authors also respond to the call in the literature to consider the influence of SEW on family firm internationalizations by analyzing the moderating effect of the importance family managers attach to each of the socioemotional wealth (SEW) dimensions – enrichment, continuity and prominence on the relationship between multiple generations involved in management and family firm internationalization.

The information was obtained by means of a questionnaire sent to the CEOs of family businesses. The authors’ sample consists of 147 Spanish family firms.

The authors find that the involvement of multiple generations in management is positively related to the internationalization of family firms. Furthermore, the importance that family CEOs attribute to the enrichment dimension of SEW reduces the intensity of the effect of the involvement of several generations in management on family firm internationalization.

The authors’ results, for the Spanish context, complement previous studies (Meneses et al., 2014) showing that the entry of new generations into the family business opens a window of opportunity for the internationalization of the family business. Furthermore, their study shows that the diverse family objectives by CEOs can have different, even conflicting effects on the internationalization decision. These results suggest that the enrichment dimension, which focuses on the short-term family goals may restrain the internationalization of the family business. However, continuity and prominence dimensions, which are related with long term family objectives and jointly enable the fulfillment of nonfamily stakeholders’ objectives, do not influence the internationalization of the family firms analyzed.

The study aims to reveal the strategic renewal (SR) of non-family employees in family small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with the effects of transformational board member leadership and psychological ownership (PO) dimensions.

Non-family employees at 82 export and import family firms (FFs) in Vietnam were selected for the study, which used a partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach.

Family board members with transformational leadership (TL) qualities and PO play an essential role in developing non-family employee SR.

The authors grant advanced family roles and relationships knowledge to the renewal and transformation of FFs' strategies and organisational structures.

This paper highlights the opportunities and challenges for family firms in managing Generation Z (Gen-Z) employees. This perspective article explores several considerations for family firms in managing their Gen-Z employees and the potential implications for their socioemotional wealth (SEW).

The authors provide a brief review of what is known about the values/work habits of Gen-Z employees and attracting, retaining and managing nonfamily employees in family firms.

The unique values, motivations and working styles of Gen-Z employees suggest the need for family business leaders to adopt a different approach to managing these employees. A focus on Gen-Z’s psychological contract, technological savviness and entrepreneurial orientation is provided with respect to how they can be managed.

The authors suggest the importance of approaching NFEs as a heterogenous group and offer avenues for future research with prospective research questions to better understand nonfamily Generation Z employees’ place in the family firm.

Although change is a necessary part of organisational life, achieving a successful change is complex. Change readiness is a critical element in successful change implementation, yet studies assessing change readiness as an underlying mechanism in the link between organisational-level factors and successful change implementation are scarce, particularly in the African context. Accordingly, the present study examined the extent to which change readiness mediates the link between learning organisation and successful change implementation in the Ghanaian context.

The study utilized a standardized questionnaire to collect data from 364 participants, working in public and private universities in Ghana. The participants were selected via the convenience sampling strategy to complete the survey on the main variables at a single point in time. The study was purely quantitative, as path analysis – a form of structural equation modelling was employed to test the hypothesized relationships in the study.

The results show that both learning organisation and change readiness facilitated successful change implementation. Finally, it was observed that change readiness served as an important mediating mechanism in the link between learning organisation and successful change implementation.

Change readiness was found to explain the link between learning organisation and successful change implementation. Thus, it is important that managers and leaders of public and private sector educational institutions in Ghana invest resources into preparing and getting employees to accept, be committed to and ready for change.

The present study contributes to the scarce knowledge of the mediating role of change readiness in the link between learning organisation and successful change implementation in the African context.