Search results

This study aims to underline the importance of addressing gender issues in family firms. It reinvigorates research in this field by revealing its current state, identifying research gaps and suggesting future agendas.

A bibliometric approach using a co-word analysis of 376 papers from the Web of Science database and their 885 keywords was performed to reveal the thematic structure of gender and family firm research, research topics, associations among them and their evolution over the last 30 years (1991–2021).

This review provides an extensive literature base and suggests research topics that facilitate the adoption of a gendered lens in family firm literature and business practice.

This review demonstrates how gender issues are intertwined with management, leadership and family firm approaches. Our observations inform scholars, policymakers and practitioners on the need to integrate gender issues into organizational culture and to connect empowerment strategies with the sociocultural environment.

This study shows the need to address women’s empowerment in business, considering different sociocultural contexts in addition to a Western focus. It also calls for embracing gender and feminist perspectives in research.

Staff working in forensic inpatient settings are at increased risk of harm perpetrated by patients. Support offered in response to such incidents can have a significant impact on how staff recover. The purpose of this paper is to explore how staff support procedures implemented in one low-secure forensic service impacted on staff recovery.

In total, 11 members of staff who had direct patient contact volunteered from an opportunity sample. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant, asking about experiences of abuse at work and subsequent staff support procedures. Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis.

Four overarching themes were identified; experiences of harm, supported recovery, missed opportunities and therapeutic relationships. This led to a better understanding of how staff coped with incidents of abuse at work and how support procedures impacted on their recovery.

The service evaluation was limited by transferability of the findings. The process of sampling may have meant there were biases in those who volunteered to take part. Further projects such as this are required to develop the themes identified.

Findings led to the development of a new integrated model of staff support.

This was one of the first studies in the UK to formally evaluate a staff support procedure in forensic low-secure services and include experiences of both clinical and non-clinical staff who are regularly exposed to potentially harmful events.

In order to deepen our knowledge of governance of family firms, the purpose of this paper is to focus our attention on the relation between family owners who are members of the board of directors and firm performance. Also, this study sheds more light on how the generation in charge of the family firm affects that relationship, as generational involvement may be a unique predictor of governance behavior in these firms.

The authors applied a cross-sectional ordinary least squares regression model to test the hypotheses on a sample of 313 non-listed Spanish family SMEs. The authors suggest the possibility of a non-linear relationship between the percentage of ownership by family members of the board of directors and firm performance, and specifically, the authors propose an S-shaped effect that implies two breakpoints.

The authors find not only that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists, but also an S-shaped relationship between family board members’ ownership and firm performance in family SMEs. Nevertheless, the results are different in comparing first-, second- and later-generation family firms.

This is one of the few empirical studies that examine the relationship between family board ownership and firm performance in the context of non-listed family SMEs. The authors consider that the influences of family directors on the board of directors as well as the concentration of family ownership on the board of directors are worth studying in non-listed family SMEs. Moreover, previous studies have focused mainly on large listed family firms but not on unlisted ones.

Rarely have studies on the acquisition of knowledge in internationalisation focused on institutional knowledge. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to investigate the acquisition of this knowledge, and its assimilation and exploitation processes in internationalisation.

The paper utilises ten longitudinal revelatory case studies built from multiple semi-structured interviews conducted with three different firm types of small- and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) in the pharmaceutical industry and secondary documents to which the researchers obtained proprietary access.

The study enhances the conceptual understanding of the institutional learning process in internationalisation by, for the first time, developing a framework to characterise this process. The study explores and identifies multiple types of institutional knowledge required, the sequencing of their acquisition, sources and learning methods utilised. It also discusses transferability of this learning across foreign markets and firms’ absorptive capacity for that knowledge. Regulatory-specific product knowledge, found to be the most important type required, appeared to affect significantly both market selection and mode of entry, and when acquired insufficiently, prevented internationalisation.

While the sample size is relatively small, and sector-specific, the findings were consistent across all the SME firms and firm types. They may also be generalisable to other sectors, firm sizes such as MNEs and types, particularly those which are knowledge-based or highly regulated, given that similar institutional knowledge and processes of acquisition are necessary for firms of all sizes in internationalisation.

International marketing managers will gain valuable insights, based on a framework proven to propel firms to successful internationalisation, upon how to plan, organise, manage and match their institutional knowledge-seeking and learning activities with their firms’ internal capabilities, staffing and other resources in an effective and timely manner.

This study contributes to the conceptual understanding of the institutional knowledge learning process in the internationalisation.

Globally, over 95% of fire related deaths and injuries occur in low- and middle-income countries. Within informal settlements, the risk of fire resulting in injury or death is particularly high. This paper examines fire risks in informal settlements in New Delhi and Cape Town, and tented informal settlements in Lebanon.

Our analysis draws on primary sources, secondary literature, statistical data and qualitative interviews.

The distribution of fire risk across urban societies is a fundamentally political issue. Residential fire risk can be tackled by accessible, affordable, safety-compliant housing. That said, important interim measures can be taken to mitigate fire risk. Some of the risks requiring attention are similar across our case studies, driven by high population densities; flammable housing materials; unreliable or inaccessible access to safe power sources; and – in the case of Cape Town and New Delhi particularly – the inability of fire services to reach sites of fire. However, these common risks are embedded in distinct social, economic and political contexts that must be placed at the center of any intervention. Interventions must also be aware that the risk of fire is not spread evenly within informal settlements, intersecting as it does with factors like gender, age, health and disability.

Informal settlement fires have been under-studied to date. The studies that do exist tend to operate within disciplinary silos. This paper represents an important interdisciplinary approach to fire within informal settlements, which grounds technical data, modeling and experiments in political, social and economic realities.

Despite recognition of the value of networking, there has been little research into the networks of female entrepreneurial practitioners, particularly in the science, engineering and technology (SET) sectors, viewed traditionally as male‐dominated. This paper aims to provide greater insights into the dynamics and quality of female entrepreneurial networks.

Insights were derived through a qualitative, in‐depth, interview‐based study of 18 female entrepreneurs operating SET‐based ventures in Northern Ireland. The use of Nvivo as the data analysis tool imposed a discipline and structure which facilitated the extraction of core insights.

Aspects investigated include network type and composition; nature and frequency of engagement; and changes in network composition and networking activities through the business lifecycle. The results focus on implications of the findings for issues of quality in networks and their impact on the value of female networks.

An understanding of these issues offers opportunities to shape government interventions to assist female entrepreneurs embarking on a venturing pathway in SET‐based ventures, or those already operating in business, to be more effective in building, utilising and enhancing the quality of their networking activities.

In exploring networking and issues of quality for female entrepreneurs operating in SET‐based sectors, traditionally viewed as male‐dominated, the paper considers an under‐researched area of the female entrepreneurship literature.

The purpose of this paper is to study the nature of the incubator manager (IM)‐client, client‐client and client‐IM‐client relationships that facilitate incubation activity.

A case study methodology was adopted for undertaking the empirical work. The case organization was an Irish Dublin‐based university campus incubator. During the course of the research, which lasted six months, data were collected from high‐technology client firms and the incubator management using semi‐structured interviews, non‐participant observation and corporate documents.

Incubation is very much dependent on the quality of human relationships and occurs via a process of co‐production in dyads and triads. Without the voluntary and active participation of client firms, the mechanisms that facilitate co‐production break down. There is no one master incubation process, it is comprised of small micro‐processes each with its own norms, dynamic and stages depending on relational quality.

The paper is based on a single case study using a qualitative, inductive and interpretive approach; the aim was analytic rather than statistical generalization, therefore, contributions are made to incubation theory.

The research makes a number of contributions; first, the amount of interaction among the incubation parties has the potential to both positively and negatively impact the overall quality of client experiences; second, levels of interaction and relational quality among a certain category of clients in the same incubator may be higher than others based on industrial affiliation; and third, brokerage behaviour by the IM that facilitates the connection of clients in consortia or links clients individually or in groups to unrelated outside agencies, improves the overall quality of the incubation environment.

Research has shown that employers in small businesses may not provide, or fund, off‐the‐job training for reasons including that they believe that no training was considered necessary in their business. The research reported in this paper aims to focus on a study of software‐related companies that form part of an important sector for potential growth.

This article reports findings from a study of 20 software related small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). The overall purpose of the research was to establish a model whereby companies within the cluster could identify the training and development needs of their employees, and also of their management team(s). Interviews were held with owner managers and senior staff, and a training needs analysis was conducted in each organisation.

A number of factors were hindering the development of managerial talent in the sample. These included their small size, a lack of resources and availability of personnel for release to undertake development programmes as well as a shortage of specialist human resource management (HRM) expertise.

This research contributes to the growing body of knowledge in the field of strategic human resource development in SMEs. However, the identification, understanding and development of knowledge capital are vital to compete within international markets and the knowledge economy. The approach suggested by the research provides a framework for improvement by identifying requirements for a “toolkit” that meets the needs of organisations and bridges the gap within the existing literature and empirical evidence.