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Scholars and practitioners agree that governance practices are at the core of what differentiates family firms from other forms of business. Yet, there is a lack of consensus in the extant literature about how and the extent to which family governance affects firm performance. This study aims to address the matter by taking a more comprehensive unified systems perspective to explore the pathways through which variations in family governance mechanisms simultaneously affect both the business and the family system.

This study utilises a global dataset sourced from a survey and structural equation modelling to empirically measure several intermediate and final outcomes of family governance.

This study finds that the use of family protocols, as well as formal and informal meetings, have positive effects on the functioning of the family, whereas family involvement in the top management team diminishes the firm's competitive advantage. In turn, this study demonstrates that both family functioning and competitive advantage are positively related to firm performance.

By taking into consideration the complexity of the family and business systems, and measuring their interlinkages, this study advances knowledge by providing a more complete picture of the family governance/firm performance relationship.

This study aims to draw on the malleable nature of processing fluency to identify the role of consumer expectation in generating diverging effects of metacognitive experiences on perception of product innovativeness and product evaluation. It also examines critical boundary conditions to offer a more sophisticated understanding of the interactive effect of expectation and processing fluency.

Studies 1, 2A and 2B recruited 1,922 online participants, and Studies 3 and 4 recruited 644 college students. The authors manipulated product innovativeness expectation by exposing participants to expert reviews of new products, and processing fluency by presenting product detail in either easy-to-read font/color contrast or difficult-to-read font/color contrast. Subsequently, perceived product innovativeness and product evaluation including actual product adoption were measured.

When a product was expected to be innovative (ordinary), feelings of difficulty with processing its detail increased (decreased) perceived innovativeness and, in turn, interest in purchase. The observation occurred only when a credible external source (vs firms) generated the innovativeness expectation or consumers’ elaboration level was not high. Furthermore, when innovativeness became associated with negative implications, perceived innovativeness no longer enhanced but impaired purchase intention.

Studies used incrementally new products only. Really new products involving a high adoption risk might produce a diverging effect. The findings need to be replicated with higher involvement products. An ideal level of difficulty with comprehending product information was not examined in the present research.

Results carry significant weight for firms who seek to draw consumer attention to their new products by choosing an optimal format of product presentation. The findings suggest that they can proactively administer a proper level of ease/difficulty with comprehending product detail depending on the extent of product innovativeness and target audience.

Extant research has not addressed how the malleable nature of processing fluency systematically affects innovativeness perception and product evaluation. The key contribution of this paper to the metacognition literature is the role of consumer expectation that alters the meaning of metacognitive experiences in relation to innovativeness perception. In addition, this is one of the first to empirically investigate perceptual processing fluency in the elaboration likelihood model theory.

This paper compares the family characteristics and work cultures of family businesses in Anglo, Southern Asia, and Confucian Asia cultures. Using the GLO BE classification and findings, the Anglo cluster of nations is distinguished by its strong performance orientation but weak family orientation. The Confucian Asian cluster is characterized by a strong performance and family orientation, and strong institutional collectivism. The Southern Asia cluster is distinguished by a strong family and humane orientation – a hallmark of its deep community orientation. Results indicate differing patterns in terms of the involvement of the family in the family business and other key organizational dimensions, although all three cultures share contextual embeddedness. The two Asian regions are similar only in terms of their high operational resiliency and business longevity, in contrast with the Anglo region, which is more moderate. For academicians, results suggest opportunities for examination of the impact of cultural and contextual differences on the relevance of prevailing theories of family business; for practitioners, results provide insights for global family business practice.

The paper aims to raise awareness in the industry of design automation tools, especially in early design phases, by demonstrating along a case study the seamless integration of a prototypically implemented optimization, supporting design space exploration in the early design phase and an in operational use product configurator, supporting the drafting and detailing of the solution predominantly in the later design phase.

Based on the comparison of modeled as-is and to-be processes of ascent assembly designs with and without design automation tools, an automation roadmap is developed. Using qualitative and quantitative assessments, the potentials and benefits, as well as acceptance and usage aspects, are evaluated.

Engineers tend to consider design automation for routine tasks. Yet, prototypical implementations support the communication and identification of the potential for the early stages of the design process to explore solution spaces. In this context, choosing from and interactively working with automatically generated alternative solutions emerged as a particular focus. Translators, enabling automatic downstream propagation of changes and thus ensuring consistency as to change management were also evaluated to be of major value.

A systematic validation of design automation in design practice is presented. For generalization, more case studies are needed. Further, the derivation of appropriate metrics needs to be investigated to normalize validation of design automation in future research.

Integration of design automation in early design phases has great potential for reducing costs in the market launch. Prototypical implementations are an important ingredient for potential evaluation of actual usage and acceptance before implementing a live system.

There is a lack of systematic validation of design automation tools supporting early design phases. In this context, this work contributes a systematically validated industrial case study. Early design-phases-support technology transfer is important because of high leverage potential.

The article deals with competition between primary schools in Berlin. The focus is on the perception of competition and the process of student selection – despite school law restrictions for primary state schools. The aim is to find out whether and in what way primary school leaders perceive a competitive situation and how they act in view of second-order competition.

Berlin primary school leaders' statements were analyzed, which were collected and evaluated using quantitative and qualitative methods.

Results show that schools with a good reputation are more likely to benefit from competition because a good reputation may increase the demand for spots at that school and may enable the school to select “desirable” students. State school leaders are more limited in their actions, while private school principals are more autonomous and are better able to make a match between a school's orientation and families' ideas.

The study is limited by its small sample size, yet it provides a basis for further research and gives much needed attention to selection processes at primary schools in Germany.

This is one of a few studies looking at the perspectives of primary school leaders regarding the competitive situation and in particular the selection of students.

Descriptions of research conducted within the interpretive research paradigm do not always capture its messy and unpredictable nature. The naturalistic inquiry described in this paper attempts to provide a candid account of some of the challenges encountered in such research. Interestingly, many of those challenges were consistent with the challenges associated with the process of learning to be a facilitator, which was the focus of my study. The study sought to describe the theories and practices of facilitator educators preparing facilitators to work in community organisations, training or education contexts, and business management settings. Following a brief description of the methodology and methods of the study, some of the unexpected symmetries between learning to be a facilitator and conducting interpretivist research are discussed. These included the need for selfawareness, practising intentionality, and managing conflicting roles. The strategies I used to respond to the research challenges I describe are also discussed and I encourage others to reflect on, and share, the trials and tribulations encountered during their research.

Previous research on salesperson-customer proximity has yielded mixed results, with some studies documenting positive proximity effects on shopping responses and others demonstrating the reverse. To reconcile such mixed findings, this paper aims to test whether and how salesperson proximity influences a series of key customer outcomes in actual retail settings using sample sizes that are considerably larger than most former investigations.

We conducted two high-powered field studies (N = 1,312) to test whether salesperson‐customer proximity influences consumers’ purchase behavior and store loyalty. Moreover, we investigated whether the short-term effects on purchase behavior were moderated by the extent to which the consumption context had a clear connection to consumers’ own bodies.

Salesperson proximity increased purchase incidence and spending in consumption contexts with a bodily basis (e.g. clothes, beauty, health), suggesting that consumers “buy their way out” in these contexts when a salesperson is violating their personal space. If anything, such proximity had a negative impact on consumers’ purchase behavior in contexts that lacked a clear bodily connection (e.g. building materials, furniture, books). Moreover, the link between proximity and consumer responses was mediated by discomfort, such that a salesperson standing close-by (vs farther away) increased discomfort, with negative downstream effects on shopping responses. Importantly, the authors found opposite proximity effects on short-term metrics (purchase incidence and spending) and long-term outcomes (store loyalty).

Drawing on the nonverbal communication literature and theories on processing fluency, the current work introduces a theoretically relevant boundary condition for the effects of salesperson-customer proximity on consumers’ purchase behavior. Specifically, the bodily basis of the consumption context is discussed as a novel moderator, which may help to explain the mixed findings in this stream of research.

Salesperson-customer proximity may serve as a strategic sales tactic to improve short-term revenue in settings that are closely tied to consumers’ own bodies and characterized by one-time purchases. However, as salesperson proximity was found to be associated with lower store loyalty, irrespective of whether the shopping setting had a bodily basis, the risk of violating consumers’ personal space may have costly consequences from a long-term perspective.

The present field studies make three central contributions. First, we introduce a novel moderator for proximity effects in various sales and service settings. Second, we test the focal hypotheses with much higher statistical power than most existing proximity studies. Finally, we document that salesperson-customer proximity ironically yields opposite results on short-term metrics and long-term outcomes, thus underscoring the importance of not solely focusing on sales effectiveness when training frontline employees.

This paper aims to address the influence of diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings on the frictional power loss of spur gears. It shows potentials for friction and bulk temperature reduction in industrial use. From a scientific point of view, the thermal insulation effect on fluid friction is addressed, which lowers viscosity in the gear contact due to increasing contact temperature.

Thermal insulation effect is analyzed in detail by means of the heat balance and micro thermal network of thermal elastohydrodynamic lubrication contacts. Preliminary results at a twin-disk test rig are summarized to categorize friction and bulk temperature reduction by DLC coatings. Based on experiments at a gear efficiency test rig, the frictional power losses and bulk temperatures of DLC-coated gears are investigated, whereby load, speed, oil temperature and coatings are varied.

Experimental investigations at the gear efficiency test rig showed friction and bulk temperature reduction for all operating conditions of DLC-coated gears compared to uncoated gears. This effect was most pronounced for high load and high speed. A reduction of the mean gear coefficient of friction on average 25% and maximum 55% was found. A maximum reduction of bulk temperature of 15% was observed.

DLC-coated gears show a high potential for reducing friction and improving load-carrying capacity. However, the industrial implementation is restrained by the limited durability of coatings on gear flanks. Therefore, a further and overall consideration of key durability factors such as substrate material, pretreatment, coating parameters and gear geometry is necessary.

Thermal insulation effect of DLC coatings was shown by theoretical analyses and experimental investigations at model test rigs. Although trial tests on gears were conducted in literature, this study proves the friction reduction by DLC-coated gears for the first time systematically in terms of various operating conditions and coatings.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-07-2020-0257/