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The purpose of this study is to understand venture capital family businesses (VCFBs) governance of portfolio companies through the deal process.

This study applies a theory-developing approach. A model of VCFB governance is developed whose key aspects are illuminated by four examples (cases) of VCFBs.

Recent research suggests that a venture capital firm's corporate deal processes can be divided into the pre-deal, deal and post-deal phases. Based on the age, size and succession dimensions, propositions for how a governance trajectory develops for VCFBs, affecting the deal process of target family firms (TFFs), are presented. These propositions highlight how the family owners' actions and behavior are related to VCFB governance, which in turn, influences the three phases involved in making an investment.

The propositions suggest how personal and administrative VCFBs' governance of the deal process of portfolio companies is significantly affected by centrifugal and centripetal forces that drive the respective types of governance where third-generation family owners appear as changers of governance approach.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the change of the founder’s psychological ownership when s/he sells the business and its implications for the organization’s strategy.

The study contributes with a longitudinal study of psychological ownership, accounting for its development over time in a Swedish e-commerce company. By applying a case study methodology, conclusions are drawn from a vast amount of archival data and interviews. The empirical material covers the transition from a founder-run, family-owned to a first foreign-owned, and currently private-equity owned company.

Theoretically, it extends understandings of psychological ownership and its strategic implications by including former legal owners; that is, how psychological ownership changes after legal ownership ceases. Thereby, it develops the individual dimension (founder and former owner) of psychological ownership as well as its collective dimension (employees toward founder). The paper contributes to the psychological ownership founder and exit-literatures by highlighting continuity after the formal sale of legal ownership and its consequences for the organization.

It finds that new legal owners can use this heritage to signal continuity and launch strategic changes by transforming it into artifacts.

This study extends the understanding of development of psychological ownership of founders from foundation to exit and its consequences for the organization’s strategy. This extension sheds new light on founders as artifacts of organizations and thereby their role for the organizational heritage.

This paper strives to understand the role of resource orchestration (RO) in the rapid growth of high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Based on a comparative case study, RO is compared between a high-tech family firm and a high-tech non-family firm. To capture the complexity of RO, this study applies a longitudinal approach using a large volume of archival and interview data gathered over ten years.

The configuration of family-firm paradoxical growth-oriented RO emphasizes RO based on collectivism and responsibility, although relying on large-scale conforming normative control. In contrast, the configuration of non-family-firm growth-oriented RO emphasizes administrative-based delegation and management-supported value creation.

By suggesting ownership-based RO configurations, this study provides insights into how ownership types, i.e. family firms and non-family firms, affect RO in firms operating in complex and dynamic environments. These configurations explain how and why RO is arranged in a growth context.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the development of the five dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) over time by taking a founder’s perspective.

The paper draws on an in-depth single-case study. It combines semi-structured interviews in the company with archival data, such as annual reports, press clips and interviews in business magazines.

The results indicate that the EO dimensions change from being personalized and directly solution-oriented to being intangible value-creation-oriented.

By suggesting ownership-based EO configurations, this study contributes insights into how different ownership forms propel EO. These configurations – that is, personal, administrative based and intangible focused – show the impact of the EO dimensions and provide a systematic and theoretical understanding of EO change over time.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the verbal content and its impact on panel-based business advice meetings (springboards) for family business owners and startup entrepreneurs. Further, the study also investigates how panel-based advising assists entrepreneurship.

The investigated springboards concern family business owners who run established firms and startup entrepreneurs who are applying for venture capital. Data from 12 different springboards are collected and studied by content analysis.

The outcomes indicate that advising is more constructive for the family business owners than for the startup entrepreneurs. This can mainly be explained by the rational screening that follows the business plan concept and group dynamics which appear in these meetings.

The study was conducted in Sweden and concerns Swedish family business owners and startup entrepreneurs. It reveals different speech patterns that appear during organized advice-giving and its implications depending on the type of entrepreneur.

This study provides potential input to change the institutional practice of panel-based business advice, which will likely support entrepreneurs in their business development and network building.

This study is the first to investigate the verbal content in panel-based business advice for family business owners. Further, it provides a deeper understanding of the institutionalized conditions that this kind of advising builds on.

This study explores how the family influences the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) process in immigrant businesses.

The paper draws on inductive multiple-case studies using 34 in-depth interviews. This paper relies on three cases of immigrant entrepreneurs originating from Mexico and Colombia that established firms in Sweden.

The results suggest that EO development trajectories vary in the presence of family roles (i.e. inspirers, backers and partners), resulting in the immigrant family business configurations of family-role-influenced proactiveness, risk-taking and innovation.

The immigrant family configurations drive three EO-enabling scenarios: (1) home-country framing, (2) family backing and (3) transnational translating. Immigrant family dynamics facilitate the development of EO over time through reciprocal interaction processes across contexts. This study indicates that, through family dynamics, EO develops as mutually interactive processes between the immigrant entrepreneur's family in the home and host countries.

The purpose of this study is to explore how the family firm identity is affected when it is no longer publicly communicated.

A case study approach was used to follow a third-generation family business, a large Swedish home electronics firm that acquired a competitor and, initially, continued using its family firm identity after the acquisition. This study longitudinally tracks the company and its owning family using archival data combined with interviews.

The case company decided to stop communicating their identity as a family business. Such a move initially appears counterintuitive, since it potentially threatens the family firm identity and leads the firm to forgo other advantages, e.g. in branding. However, the decision was based on arguments that were rational from a business perspective, leading to a decoupling of family and firm identity.

This study contributes to the literature by showing a decoupling of internally experienced and externally communicated identities. It further contributes to the understanding of the family firm identity concept.

This paper addresses the phenomenon of venture capital firms which are also family businesses (VCFBs). The purpose of this paper is to explore and understand the phenomenon of VCFB by answering the following questions: What are the features of professionalization in VCFBs? And, how do professionalization and types of family businesses explain the strategies and governance of VCFBs?

As an explorative case study, it maps the Swedish venture capital (VC) industry and compares two VCFBs and their business investments with regard to strategy and governance.

By suggesting two major configurations, the study explains how family business development and levels of professionalization relate to differences in VCFBs’ strategies, which in turn, affect their governance. The personal VCFB features active owners who personally take responsibility roles and strongly focus on customers and relationships. The administrative VCFB strongly focuses on predetermined financial metrics, high ethical awareness among board members, and ongoing interplay between the active family board members and minority shareholders.

The study was conducted in Sweden and concerns Swedish VCFBs. The paper contributes to the literature by combining the two currently separate research streams, i.e. family business and VC, highlighting the importance and consequences of family ownership in VC businesses.

The present study provides stock market investors and stock analysts with a deeper understanding of VCFBs’ strategy incentives. By identifying the kind of VCFB and its relation to strategy, more reasonable assessments and analyses of the VCFBs’ actions will be possible. Family firms willing to accept VC-finance should consider the type of VC and the potential consequences of family ownership.

This study is the first to classify VC firms as family businesses. Moreover, it shows the features of professionalization in VCFBs by suggesting a set of configurations.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the interdependence between regional culture and resilience in family business-dominated regions.

The study is based on a literature review and helps to fill the knowledge gap regarding regional culture and resilience in family business-dominated contexts.

The authors highlight similarities and differences between two regions of Sweden with distinct regional cultures that support resilience. A number of norms that are significant in generating resilient regions are identified. One key finding is that the regional culture developed during the proto-industrial era, in connection with home production, still affects and contributes to resilience in these family business-dominated regions.

The study is based on two case studies, so no generalizable conclusions can be drawn.

For policy makers, this study shows that structural crises can be overcome with a strong regional culture, as it can foster resilience. However, regional culture is hard to implement by political decisions. For owners and managers of organizations, this study suggests that it is essential to consider regional culture as an important factor for the organization.

This study draws on a comparison of two regions in Sweden with explicit regional cultures.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate and argue for the necessity of deconstructing the entrepreneurship concept by analyzing entrepreneurial orientation (EO) at various levels of the business model.

Literature review supplemented with five illustrative cases.

A business model approach to entrepreneurship enables identification of the component of the business model in which entrepreneurship was started. This has several implications for analysis of the EO-performance relationship and for the identification of antecedents to EO.

The EO of firms has generally been analyzed at a generic level, i.e. the concept has been used to measure and analyze the overall entrepreneurship of firms. In this paper, the authors argue that EO can be present in various dimensions of a business and that firms can be entrepreneurial in certain areas and conservative in other areas.