Abstract
Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here? That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Anyone attending the annual conference of the Academy of Management (AoM) has a sense of the size and scope of the field of management. With nearly 20,000 members spanning 120 countries, 1 AoM is aptly described as a “big tent” (George, 2014). By definition, all members of the AoM identify themselves as management scholars. Most members, however, more closely identify with one or a few subfields of management (e.g., strategic management, organizational behavior) and many may also identify with fields or disciplines that reside outside of management (e.g., economics, finance, marketing) or even outside of business (e.g., anthropology, psychology, sociology). By offering a choice of two of the 25 Divisions or Interest Groups (DIGs) as part of the registration fees, AoM acknowledges the varied interests of its members and encourages cross-disciplinary research.
With no DIG solely focused on its domain of study, family business scholarship mirrors this diversity of interests, addressing issues across the domain of management. Despite this, family business, until about a decade ago, was largely absent at AoM conferences. For example, in 2004, only five of the 1,200 sessions of AoM featured family business research; these were primarily found in the Entrepreneurship Division’s preconference workshops. Since then, smaller gatherings like IFERA (International Family Enterprise Research Academy) and FERC (Family Enterprise Research Conference) emerged as important venues for family business scholars to exchange their research, develop their networks, and advance the field. As these have grown, scholars have acknowledged the importance of these gatherings but have also expressed concerns regarding the tendency of family business researchers to only talk among themselves (Zahra & Sharma, 2004). Responding to these concerns, family business scholars have increased their engagement across the AoM since 2004. At the 2017 AoM conference, family business research was featured in 13 of the AoM’s 25 DIGs and represented 50 of the 438 accepted papers or 12 of 109 paper sessions within the Entrepreneurship Division alone. 2
Given that family firms are the dominant organizational form, there is still a long way to go before the AoM conference adequately reflects the research attention these organizations deserve and, in turn, help narrow the gap between management research and practice that has bothered many management scholars for decades (e.g., Ghoshal, 2005; Hambrick, 1994; Rynes, Bartunek, & Daft, 2001; Sharma, 2010; Vermeulen, 2007). Nevertheless, the boundary-spanning nature of family business research is clearly evidenced. As we highlight in Table 1, there appears to be wide-ranging opportunities for scholars to contribute across the spectrum of management by developing stimulating research programs in their various domains of interest using family enterprises as a platform for discovery and examination of important phenomena. Indeed, being mindful of the tendency of family business scholars to borrow from other disciplines more than giving back (Shepherd, 2016; Wortman, 1994; Zahra & Sharma, 2004), we hope to point to the potential power of a reciprocating mind-set as we move forward. Consider agency theory, for instance. While the roots of this theory lie in financial economics (e.g., Jensen & Meckling, 1976), when this perspective was applied to the study of family firms, its assumptions and boundaries were broadened and clarified revealing four distinct types of agentic costs: (1) shareholders versus managers (classic agency), (2) controlling/family shareholders versus noncontrolling shareholders (principal–principal agency), (3) shareholders versus creditors, and (4) family shareholders versus family-at-large shareholders (Villalonga, Amit, Trujillo, & Guzman, 2015). Similarly, the resource-based view and stewardship theory found new energy when considered with respect to family firms (see reviews by Madison, Holt, Kellermanns, & Ranft, 2016; Rau, 2014).
Opportunities for Family Business Research across the Academy of Management.
Descriptions are based on the division and interest group descriptions provided by the Academy of Management (Source: http://aom.org/DIG/).
As we address more fully in the next section, the review articles in this issue, along with the previous review issue of Family Business Review (FBR) 3 and other similar outlets (e.g., the Sage Handbook of Family Business), are likely to point to many opportunities for family business research that crosses boundaries and contributes to the broader field of management (and beyond). To fulfill this promise, however, the prevailing mind-set that family business is a niche context to study management issues must change to reflect the reality that any management theory is incomplete if its assumptions and boundaries have not been tested in family firms. Theories emerging from research on family firms are likely to apply to nonfamily firms as well, albeit in modified forms. We conclude this introductory article by sharing a few opportunities to deepen understanding of the phenomena of interest to researchers in different DIGs by building and testing theory in family firms.
Leveraging the Family Business to Expand Management Research
Family business scholarship is postured to inform, lead, enrich, and guide managerial research in unique ways because of the “reciprocal influence of family and business” in all organizations (Zahra & Sharma, 2004, p. 333). Researchers from various disciplines, such as economics, sociology, and psychology, have acknowledged the importance of exploring reciprocal relationship between family structures, relationships, and events on key individual and organizational outcomes (e.g., Aldrich & Cliff, 2003; Shukla, Carney, & Gedajlovic, 2014; Von Schlippe & Schneewind, 2014). Individuals within all firms—family-based organizations or not—must navigate personal, and often emotion-laden, delicate, relationships that can complicate many interactions within and outside organizational boundaries (Shepherd, 2016). This suggests that many issues and phenomena currently considered within the domain of family business have broader implications. As such, family businesses can serve as a platform for study that can potentially expose many untapped opportunities to explore complex and nested relationships across levels of study and time, using multitheoretic lenses.
The four articles in this issue 4 critically examine the gaps between “what we know” and “what we need to know” regarding four important, yet distinct, topic areas. These articles examine (1) how institutional theory has helped resolve theoretical inconsistencies in understanding family firm behaviors and can guide deeper understanding of family firms; (2) how the involvement of nonfamily members in family firms present opportunities and challenges for the firm by examining the literature across pre-employment-, employment-, and outcome-related issues; (3) how the introduction of psychological concepts help us understand the mechanisms of advice giving and taking, using an input–process–output framework to categorize and integrate the literature; and (4) how a social psychological lens enables understanding of the locus and drivers of socioemotional wealth (SEW), proposing that SEW will be understood more clearly if a social, motivational, cognitive, and affective perspective is applied. Each review reveals opportunities for future research including insights into how family business research can contribute to the “big tent” of management.
Article 1: The Intersection of Family Firms and Institutional Contexts
Based on a review of 124 articles published in 24 top-ranked journals over three decades, Soleimanof, Rutherford, and Webb (2018) summarize the role of institutional theory in explaining family businesses’ behavior and how this perspective can resolve contradictory findings in the literature. They explain why the interactions of family firms with their institutional contexts can be different from those of nonfamily firms. In synthesizing the selected literature, the authors distinguish between studies aimed to understand the influence of formal or informal institutions on family firms, from those directed to understand how family firms influence these institutions. This review confirms three unproductive biases previously observed in the family business literature: the neglect of family in research; a focus on North America and Western Europe in research; and a tendency to borrow from institutional theory more than giving back to it (e.g., Jaskiewicz et al., 2017). Important opportunities to simultaneously contribute to institutional theory while deepening knowledge on family firms are identified and highlighted.
The importance of context in firm behavior lies at the core of institutional theory. This literature has long recognized family as one of the seven key societal institutions subject to reciprocal influence with business organizations (e.g., Friedland & Alford, 1991; Thornton & Ocasio, 1999); the other six are market, state, corporation, profession, religion, and community. Institutional theorists have also had a long-standing interest in understanding coping strategies of organizations operating amid “institutional voids” when formal institutions that prescribe a framework for economic transactions and maintaining order in the system are absent or poorly developed (e.g., Greenwood, Raynard, Kodeih, Micelotta, & Lounsbury, 2011). Also of interest to this literature have been the subjects of balancing the demands of multiple coexisting “institutional logics” that guide societal behaviors and economic transactions, and how firms attempt to influence their environments (e.g., Goodrick & Reay, 2011; Greenwood, Diaz, Li, & Lorente, 2010; Martin, Currie, Weaver, Finn, & McDonald, 2017). By highlighting key works along each of these dimensions, Soleimanof et al. (2018) argue that family business scholars are well positioned to make important theoretical contributions to institutional theory.
An intriguing line of research is to consider differences between family and cultural institutions in understudied regions of the world where family firms are the predominant organizational form. For example, research on family firms in Africa, the second largest continent of the world with several fast-growing economies, could shed light on how firms overcome institutional voids in business support systems and structures that govern resource availability. Or, how household enterprise survives and grows at the base of the pyramid where over four billion of the world’s population lives for under $2 a day? By bringing to attention the important early steps focused in these directions (e.g., Gras & Nason, 2015; Webb, Pryor, & Kellermanns, 2015), Soleimanof et al. (2018) open many avenues for interesting projects that may be particularly appealing to researchers in the Critical Management Studies, Entrepreneurship, Organization and Management Theory, Social Issues in Management, and Organization and Natural Environment, among others (see Table 1).
Article 2: Nonfamily Members in Family Firms
Tabor, Chrisman, Madison, and Vardaman (2018) systematically review 82 articles published in 34 journals over three decades to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the roles, impact, and challenges associated with the involvement of nonfamily members in family firms. While the authors categorized the article topics into three broad themes (pre-employment considerations, employment considerations, and employment outcomes), the literature is found to be quite fragmented in terms of topics studied and theoretical perspectives applied. For instance, in addition to some more common theories that one might expect to be utilized in this literature (e.g., resource-based view, agency, stewardship), there are also cases where less common perspectives have been drawn upon including fairness, social exchange, equity, leader–member exchange, and signaling theories. Overall, these authors demonstrate the diversity of the literature, highlighting that there is much yet to be explored.
Among others, Tabor et al. (2018) identify several opportunities to explore and better understand behavioral issues such as justice, commitment, and human resource (HR) management systems using family business as a platform. For instance, behavioral scholars, who typically define justice as employees’ perceptions of the fairness of procedures and equitable outcomes of resources (e.g., wages), have conducted little research directed at understanding the nuances of when multiple distribution rules or allocation principles may prevail at different levels of organization (Rupp, Shapiro, Folger, Skarlicki, & Shao, 2017). Individuals respond to injustice by engaging in withdrawal behaviors such as lower involvement and turnover, though it is recognized that work rules and tight labor markets may dissuade such deviant behaviors encouraging other substitute behaviors (Cropanzano, Anthony, Daniels, & Hall, 2017). Yet little is understood about substitute behaviors, their influence on individuals, or how the informal culture and climate may mitigate some of the formal inconsistences that are instilled when multiple distribution rules are present.
In family firms, nonfamily members may perceive inequities in comparison to family members due to greater accountability, expectations, and demands. These perceived inequities may manifest through inequitable compensation or reward systems. Understanding the antecedents and consequences of such perceptions may add to insights for the justice research that considers equitably distributed outcomes as fair. Multiple distribution or allocation rules may be expected by nonfamily members in family firms, so understanding the fairness criteria applied by nonfamily employees would contribute to the foundational equity tenets of justice theory (e.g., Rupp et al., 2017). An examination of such issues would not only extend our understanding of the justice literature but would also offer a new perspective on why family businesses succeed despite the often-discussed bifurcated or asymmetric treatment of family and nonfamily members (Tabor et al., 2018).
Tabor et al.’s (2018) review also provides a road map to contribute to organizational behavior and human resource management research by isolating and examining the unique phenomena of interest to scholars interested in these domains of study. For example, in the pre-employment phase, nonfamily background issues are unique to the family firm, and have yet to find a place in HR theory. Likewise, in the employment phase, justice and socialization for nonfamily employees may be quite different from such training for family employees. From an HR outcomes perspective, noneconomic goals are unique to family firms and not yet integrated in theory. These opportunities in family firm research can expand our broad understanding of organizational behavior and HR systems. In addition, many interesting projects may be appealing to researchers in the Managerial and Organizational Cognition DIGs as well those more practice-oriented DIGs like Management Consulting, Strategizing Activities and Practices, and Health Care Management (see Table 1).
Article 3: Family Business Advising
Strike, Michel, and Kammerlander (2018) incorporate the work done by family business scholars (52 articles) with that of psychologists (36 articles) to explore the microfoundations of advising within family businesses. Advising research from the psychology literature has built on behavioral psychology foundations (e.g., Simon, 1947), taken individual- or dyadic-level perspectives, and examined the processes involved in advice taking and advice giving. These processes are typically examined through experimental designs where participants imagine themselves in the role of advisor (e.g., Effron & Miller, 2015). In contrast, family business research is commonly conducted with formal and informal advisors to family firms and largely explores the relationship between advising and its economic or noneconomic outcomes at the firm or family levels. Strike et al. (2018) point out that while different, each perspective provides important insights into the nuances of advising and to facilitate key outcomes for family firms. They suggest that family business research could learn from the psychologists regarding how advice is given, judged, and weighted by individuals and families. In turn, psychologists could learn more from family firm advising scholars regarding organization- and family-level outcomes that are linked to timely and effective advising offered in real problem-solving contexts.
Strike et al. (2018) also highlight the insightful qualitative studies that show how advisors can increase competencies within family firms. This research is consistent with several studies of microfoundations that have examined knowledge-based assets like capabilities and competences (Felin et al., 2015). Capabilities are often said to reside at the organizational level and reflect the organization’s capability to sense, shape, and seize opportunities. Little attention, however, has been given to the factors and processes that help disseminate these capabilities throughout organizations, which offers up several opportunities for future research. In short, this review opens many interesting research directions for management scholars, but particularly those who identify with the Careers, Conflict Management, and Management Consulting, and Organizational Behavior divisions of AoM.
Article 4: The Social Psychology of Socioemotional Wealth
Jiang, Kellermanns, Munyon, and Morris (2018) analyze 416 papers published in 25 journals to examine a topic at the heart of many family business studies: socioemotional wealth (SEW). They highlight how researchers have melded the behavioral and strategic traditions of family business scholarship with long-standing psychological assumptions about how family members’ affective, cognitive, motivational, and social considerations operate within their business, shaping SEW. They examine the extent to which SEW has become reified, which occurs when abstract concepts like SEW are treated as something concrete and devoid of the variation and human behavior that causes them.
Jiang et al.’s (2018) discussion highlights two generally accepted ideas in family business research. First, family firms differ from nonfamily firms and among one another as they make strategic trade-offs in their pursuit of both financial and nonfinancial outcomes. We add that as nonfamily firms also face these same trade-offs, insights from family business research may find applications in other organizations as well. For instance, entrepreneurship research shows that social enterprises often have dual identities because they pursue both utilitarian (i.e., product-oriented, economic) and normative (i.e., people-oriented, social) goals (Moss, Short, Payne, & Lumpkin, 2011). Second, family firms have varying socioemotional concerns influenced by the extent of ownership discretion to pursue those concerns and prevailing capabilities to achieve the desired results. That is, an understanding of the microfoundations of SEW or the noneconomic utilities within firms furthers our understanding of the broader construct of sustainable organizational performance of key interest to strategic management scholars (Richard, Devinney, Yip, & Johnson, 2009). At the same time, this line of inquiry can deepen our understanding of the microfoundations that govern emotional resources and outcomes within groups and firms. In addition to insights for the family business literature, such research can shed light on group emotions (Menges & Kilduff, 2015) or how entrepreneurs build emotional resources to further their ventures and gain legitimacy (Shepherd, 2016). This perspective of SEW opens opportunities to understand the flow of emotions within and between groups in a firm and how these forces shape strategic opportunities. The microfoundations perspectives taken by Jiang et al. (2018) point to the potential of unpacking how firm-level variables originate, emerge, and change as a result of individuals and the interactions among them—topics of interest to researchers in several DIGs such as Managerial and Organizational Cognition, and Organization Development and Change.
Moving Forward
The articles in this review, which systematically review 710 articles and are guided by two theoretical perspectives (i.e., institutional theory, Soleimanof et al., 2018; socioemotional wealth Jiang et al., 2018) and address two key topics (i.e., nonfamily employees, Tabor et al., 2018; advising, Strike et al., 2018), offer several exciting research directions and, as importantly, insights into how family business research can function as a boundary-spanning platform for management research. To fully capitalize on these opportunities, however, family business researchers must challenge themselves to clearly articulate how their research pursuits will not only shed light on unique behaviors and dilemmas of family firms but also enrich the scholarly conversations being held across the Academy.
According to Hollenbeck (2008), two effective ways to frame a contribution are consensus shifting and consensus creating. Consensus shifting occurs when a manuscript identifies widely held assumptions and challenges them to modify existing theory. Consensus creation occurs by clarifying the lines of debate and providing a way forward. Reviews in this issue present opportunities for scholars to both shift and create consensus for both family business research specifically and management research generally. Studies examining institutional complexities, for instance, may shift the consensus regarding the inconsistencies between family and other institutional logics (Soleimanof et al., 2018). Similarly, widely held assumptions regarding the need to have a uniform set of rules to positively influence distributive justice can be challenged by extending the work reviewed by Tabor et al. (2018). Strike et al. (2018) and Jiang et al. (2018) highlight opportunities to create consensus among scholars on how macro-level variables originate and change based on individual- or group-level influences.
Beyond the reviews in this issue, it is important to contemplate the opportunities that can help family business researchers move from the sidelines of academe to a more central and foundational position. With an overlap of two major sociological systems of family and business, the exploration of family firms opens unique research opportunities for all management scholars that can enrich management theory and guide practice. To aid in this effort, Table 1 lists the domain of each DIG of the AoM, highlights where family business research was featured in the 2017 conference, and shares key articles that may interest researchers in each domain. As such, Table 1 provides a starting point for scholars to further explore theories and phenomena that can both inform and be informed by family business research. For example, family business research clearly aligns with the Careers Division’s interest in the development of individuals’ careers and the interactions between individuals and work. Therefore, family business researchers might respond to calls for studies that address how complex intrapersonal identities—be they family, organizational, or occupational—interact to facilitate personal and organizational outcomes (Anteby et al., 2016).
FBR’s first review introduction article noted that “family business is on the threshold of its next era” with the included reviews representing “the past, present, and future of family business research” (Short, Sharma, Lumpkin, & Pearson, 2016, p. 12). Building on this legacy, it is our hope that the articles in this issue can be leveraged to fulfill the aspirations that “family business scholars are poised to help build the foundation of knowledge” for topics that have “positive implications for individuals, families, organizations, and societies” (Shepherd, 2016, p. 156). Family business researchers can take the conversations across the spectrum of the AoM to places where they have not yet gone by creating and shifting consensus in important directions.