Abstract
Despite the growing interest in resilience in the family business context, little attention has been devoted to understanding the influence of religion on the way business families respond to adverse environments. We use a unique ethnography of a Middle Eastern faith-led family firm to investigate how religiosity influences the way the business family resists and rebounds from environmental shocks. We identify religious role expectations as a pivotal driver of particularistic responses in family firms to advance a religious-based foundation for business family resilience.
Introduction
The 2010 “Arab Spring” revolutions created a political earthquake in the Arab world. This novel regional political instability worried the politically stable Arab Middle Eastern monarchies. This wave of anti-government, pro-democracy protests and armed rebellions in the Middle East region quickly incited the so far spared Arab monarchies to better protect their political power and leadership. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), unprecedented regulatory changes were decided in the labor and real estate markets. This disrupted the access to human and physical resources needed by firms. Specifically, the visa ban for workers from Arab Spring countries and the increase of the operating costs related to their branch networks represented a threat for many UAE-based companies. This was particularly true of small and medium retail enterprises in the hospitality industry. In the rest of the article, we will refer to these events as environmental “jolts,” to underline the abrupt and rough nature of these shocks.
Sudden and unprecedented events, such as these UAE regulatory upheavals, have been regularly studied by management scholars. Referred to as unpredictable events and distinguishable from other external events, these environmental jolts disrupt the status quo because of their dramatic and potentially threatening character (Meyer, 1982). An extensive literature from various disciplines has revealed that firms strive to survive by demonstrating resilience at the organizational (Lengnick-Hall & Beck, 2009) and individual levels (Burnard & Bhamra, 2011). A recent approach views resilience as the process by which individuals—as well as larger systems such as families or organizations—are able to positively adapt to significant difficulties, adversity, or hardship (Fisher et al., 2019).
Although the conceptualization of resilience in the workplace is still in its infancy (Fisher et al., 2019), family business scholars have been increasingly interested in understanding why family firms are particularly resilient (e.g., Chrisman et al., 2011; Cruz et al., 2019; Danes et al., 2009; Le Breton-Miller & Miller, 2013, 2021; Pieper, 2020; Santoro et al., 2021; Soluk et al., 2021; Wilson et al., 2013). The study of resilience in family firms is critical as many family business owners intend to transfer their firm to the next generation of family members (Chrisman et al., 2011). Although extant studies yield important insights about family firm resilience to adversity such as environmental jolts (e.g., Campopiano et al., 2019; Conz et al., 2020; Smith, 2016; Zachary et al., 2017), the focus on the family-level responses has received little attention so far. Although prior research has revealed that resilience is socially constructed, developed through the interactions and connections between system members (Powley, 2009), most studies have focused on the organizational level (Burnard & Bhamra, 2011; Cruz et al., 2019), neglecting the analysis of what family members do or how they become resilient over time (Walsh, 2016). In the family business field, the few studies that explore family resilience reveal that the family’s involvement in the firm can lead to an idiosyncratic family business resilience, which refers to the ability of the family system to resist and rebound from adversity (Cruz et al., 2019; Danes, 2006; Walsh, 2003, 2016).
In family theory and practice, family adaptation is viewed as an ongoing process with developmental changes and challenges throughout the life cycle, and where success and failure to adapt can affect the well-being of the family system (Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2013). The role of family belief systems as a key process of family resilience has been highlighted as fostering positive adaptation of the family in the context of significant adversity (Walsh, 2003, 2009). In this article, we choose to focus specifically on the controlling family’s religiosity, which has a unique influence on the behavior of the family and business systems (Astrachan et al., 2020; Azouz et al., 2021; Fang et al., 2013; Kavas et al., 2020; Kellermanns, 2013) but has been so far overlooked by existing research on family business resilience. Hence, the primary unit of analysis adopted is the business family’s behavioral response along with the impact of religiosity on that response.
Appreciating how resilience develops in business families—the families that own and influence family firms—is an important issue, especially in faith-led contexts. Indeed, the behaviors may be unique as the business family is composed of family members who are more likely to have homogeneous religious beliefs compared with nonfamily firms with unrelated owners (Arregle et al., 2007; Babchuk et al., 1967). Although identification with a particular religion may affect the role expectations and subsequent behaviors of firm actors (Stryker & Burke, 2000), the controlling family may attach more legitimacy to stakeholders with similar religiosity, making the firm–stakeholders relationship stronger. This can contribute to a higher likelihood of family firm survival (Fang et al., 2013). By exploring the process through which business family members become resilient, our article thus seeks to enrich current knowledge on resilience in faith-led family firms. It does so by examining more closely the microfoundations of the family system (De Massis & Foss, 2018; Jiang et al., 2018; Payne, 2018).
In light of the above, our research addresses the following overarching question: How does religiosity affect the business family resilience process when faced with disruptive challenges related to environmental jolts? We address this question using a grounded theory building approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), which is well suited for research on an emergent line of enquiry. For this study, we draw on a longitudinal ethnography of an Egyptian faith-led family firm located in the UAE, a majority-Muslim country. What makes this ethnographic case study distinctive is that the main author, referred to as “the ethnographer,” has primarily and opportunistically adopted a participant-observation method over an extended period (Adler & Adler, 1987). During the 6 years spent with this family firm as a family-in-law manager, the ethnographer could observe, from the inside and in real time, how religiosity affects the way the business family resists and rebounds from disruptive challenges. Consequently, we induce a conceptual model by analyzing qualitative interviews and observational data from a 6-year ethnographic study of an Egyptian faith-led family firm operating in the hospitality industry in the UAE.
Our findings reveal how religiosity affects the way the business family members resist and rebound from environmental jolts. To provide a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the business family resilience in a faith-led context, the outcome of our analysis is a process-focused model that is composed of three sets of resilient responses to environmental jolts—Family Spiritual Resignation, Family Capital Mobilization, and Family Optimal Arbitration—offering several contributions to the family business and resilience literature. First, we contribute to advance knowledge on business families by highlighting the importance of the controlling family’s religiosity as a critical foundation of business families’ decisions and behaviors. Second, our findings also contribute to the mainstream resilience literature by proposing a process-focused model of how resilience develops over time in a faith-led context. As a result, our study provides knowledge on the underexamined upper echelons of business families by introducing the role of religious role expectations as a pivotal driver of particularistic responses in faith-led family firms to advance a religious-based foundation for business family resilience. Third, our study contributes to research related to social capital, socioemotional wealth (SEW), and familiness by exploring the influence of cultural expectations. Based on the extent to which an individual identifies with a religion and engages in actions consistent with the role expectations of members of that religion, our emergent model sheds light on the key function of religious role expectations in the instrumentality of social relationships in faith-led family firms confronted by adversity.
Resilience and Religion in Family Firms: A Literature Review
Organizational Resilience in the Family Firm Context
Extant family firm literature on resilience has predominantly adopted an organizational perspective. Scholars have been paying increasing attention to the identification of organizational factors and processes that foster family firm resilience to adversity (e.g., Brewton et al., 2010; Chrisman et al., 2011; Kets de Vries, 1993; Minichilli et al., 2016; van Essen et al., 2015; Villalonga & Amit, 2010). Family business research revealed that when unexpected events are seen as a threat to firm survival, they could trigger firm-level responses that show how family firms adapt to their changing environment (Smith, 2016). Zachary et al. (2017) also found that before, during, and after an environmental jolt, there is a drastic change to the family business entrepreneurial orientation. Campopiano et al. (2018) showed how family-centered, noneconomic goals can affect the way family firms absorb and react to environmental jolts by leveraging slack resources and innovation. By adopting a more fine-grained analysis, Conz et al. (2020) identified different resilience practices based on the individual owners’/managers’ understanding of resilience to external threats. Taken together, research suggests that there are three commonly used ways to address the family firms’ unique attributes and their relationship with resilience: social capital (Arregle et al., 2007; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Pearson et al., 2008; Wilson et al., 2013; Zahra, 2010); the pursuit of family-centered, noneconomic goals to generate and preserve SEW (Chrisman et al., 2012; Gómez-Mejía et al., 2007); and “familiness” as a resource (Sirmon & Hitt, 2003).
Regarding the concept of social capital, scholars distinguish two forms: an internal “bonding” capital, through the construct known as family social capital (FSC; Arregle et al., 2007) and a “bridging” capital, through the construct known as organizational social capital (OSC; Zahra, 2010). Embodied in relationships among people within the family unit and in ties the family firm has with external stakeholders (Payne et al., 2011), social capital possesses cognitive, relational, and structural dimensions (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). While the cognitive dimension refers to a shared language and narratives, the relational dimension is based on identity, trust, norms, and obligations such as those based on religion. Finally, the structural dimension refers to the connection of these diverse social structures from which family firms can build more effective relationships with their stakeholders such as family members, suppliers, and customers (Arregle et al., 2007; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Pearson et al., 2008; Wilson et al., 2013). Consequently, scholars consider social capital as a key element that might lead to better chances of survivability compared with nonfamily firms. For instance, family firms’ stakeholders may be more willing to provide payment facilities or extend credit terms during hard times (Wilson et al., 2013). Similarly, scholars suggest that in the face of external threats to the family firm survival, family members will likely take actions to ensure firm survival (Gómez-Mejía et al., 2007) because exiting would imply a loss or degradation of their SEW (e.g., Chirico et al., 2020; Feldman et al., 2016).
Although these salient and unique characteristics—social capital and SEW—focus on nonfinancial aspects, they are in fact related to survivability capital, which refers to the willingness of stakeholders to provide human and financial resources to overcome hard times, and ultimately increase the chances of family firm survival (Brewton et al., 2010; Dyer & Panicheva Mortensen, 2005; Sirmon & Hitt, 2003; Villalonga & Amit, 2010). Survivability capital—the integration of the controlling family’s human, social, and financial capital resources—is one of the unique resources of family firms that has been referred to as “familiness” (Sirmon & Hitt, 2003). However, although familiness refers to the idiosyncratic firm-level bundle of resources resulting from the involvement of the family in the firm (Habbershon & Williams, 1999), we still have little knowledge about the processes that allow family firms to successfully leverage these resources (e.g., Eddleston et al., 2008; Zellweger et al., 2010). Similarly, despite the critical role played by social capital and SEW in the family firm resilience, we have a limited understanding of the micro-level mechanisms behind the deployment of these unique family firm attributes (De Massis & Foss, 2018; Jiang et al., 2018), especially in faith-led contexts.
Toward a Process-Based Family Perspective on Family Firm Resilience
Although the idea of organizational resilience as a firm-level characteristic embedded within the organization is relevant (e.g., Boin & Van Eeten, 2013), this provides little understanding of the temporal dynamics and mechanisms of responding to adversity. Some scholars thus call for the adoption of another perspective to better understand how resilience develops by focusing on what resilient individuals actually experience and do in the context of adversity (Orchiston, 2013). Because resilient individuals are the foundation of a resilient organization (Annarelli & Nonino, 2016), it is crucial to consider the temporal unfolding of resilience mechanisms, which involves both reactivity to adverse stimuli and subsequent coping efforts (Fisher et al., 2019). Resilience is ultimately displayed within a temporal context through cognitive, affective, and behavioral mechanisms of responding to adversity. As a result, a growing consensus considers family firm resilience as “an ongoing, often emergent process” rather than a stable trait or outcome (Brewton et al., 2010; Fisher et al., 2019; Patterson, 2002; Walsh, 1996).
Through this process-based approach, family firm resilience is characterized by individual and collective creativity to solve problems and get work done (Danes, 2006). By considering that resilience at the individual level can similarly function at the family level (Patterson, 2002), scholars consider that resilience is built both in the firm and in the family, and the latter permeates the boundaries of the firm (Brewton et al., 2010; Campopiano et al., 2019; Cruz et al., 2019; Danes et al., 2009; Patterson, 2002). When considering families in business, a family resilience approach focuses on strengths and resources in dealing with hardship based on the individual and collective responses of family members (Walsh, 2016). More precisely, accumulating evidence suggests that family belief systems such as religion play a positive role in the support of individual and family resilience (Balog et al., 2014; McCubbin & McCubbin, 2013; Walsh, 2009). However, despite the importance of the community and cultural context when studying family resilience (e.g., Brewton, 2010), how business families demonstrate resilience in a faith-led context remains little understood so far. To reduce this gap, scholars have called for research on the influence of religious beliefs on the family system’s responses to disruptive external events (e.g., Astrachan et al., 2020; Smith, 2016). To better capture the micro-level mechanisms of what is experienced and enacted by family members in the context of adversity, faith-led family organizations should thus be studied through both a family system perspective and a process-based approach.
Family Resilience in the Family Firm Context: A View From Religious Role Expectations
Religion can be seen as a shared faith-based belief system (Conroy & Emerson, 2004). It refers not only to beliefs but also to a system of values, such as “truthfulness, trust, humility, forgiveness, compassion, thankfulness, service, and peace”. It has been shown that religiosity—defined as a belief in God accompanied by a commitment to follow principles believed to be set by God (McDaniel & Burnett, 1990)—has an influence on both attitudes and behaviors (Weaver & Agle, 2002). Playing a critical role in times of crisis and prolonged adversity, research supports the idea that religiosity through deep faith practices, such as prayers and religious affiliation, anchor, nourish, and foster individual and family resilience (Werner & Smith, 1992). More precisely, an extensive stream of research explains that religions offer role expectations that, when internalized through repeated social interactions, contribute to a person’s self-identity as a member of a specific religion (e.g., Stryker & Burke, 2000; Weaver & Agle, 2002). When religion becomes the main self-identity, the violation of religious norms will cause cognitive and emotional discomfort, thus motivating the person to obey religious rules. Put more simply, when a person’s religiosity is high, religion becomes more salient to identity, and consequently, this person is more likely to act in accordance with the role expectations associated with the religion (Wimberley, 1989).
Among the burgeoning literature on the influence of religiosity in family firm’s decisions and behaviors (see Astrachan et al., 2020; Kellermanns, 2013), Fang et al. (2013) conceptually proposed that when the business family and its stakeholders identify with a particular religion, it may affect their role expectations and subsequent behaviors (Stryker & Burke, 2000), such as the way individuals cope with negative life events (Pargament et al., 1992) or adopt helping behaviors (Batson & Gray, 1981). By doing what they think is right to receive God’s blessings and God’s satisfaction, religiosity may create an environment that bonds family members with internal and external stakeholders in the quest for a common and higher purpose. The strong and enduring relationships between the business family and its stakeholders may thus contribute to the family members’ resilience, and ultimately to the long-term survival of their firm.
However, we still have limited empirical knowledge about the religion-oriented family resilience process underpinning the influence of the controlling family’s religiosity on the family firm behaviors when confronted by adversity. The business family resilience process remains little understood in a faith-led context while accumulated evidence suggests that religion may serve as a key driver of SEW and social capital (Azouz et al., 2021; Balog et al., 2014; Kavas et al., 2020; Kellermanns, 2013), and may ultimately explain family firms’ decisions and behaviors (Astrachan et al., 2020). By adopting a family perspective, exploring the influence of religiosity on resilience in the family business context is thus a promising avenue for developing insightful research and empirical contributions.
Research Site and Methods
Empirical Context
Background Context: The “Arab Spring” Revolutions
As a country established in 1971 from a federation of seven independent emirates, the UAE has witnessed a rapid evolution, going from a trading society to a booming economy with a modern infrastructure and technology. To avoid a “revolutionary contagion,” the UAE authorities decided at the beginning of the Arab Spring revolutions to adopt a set of regulatory decisions affecting the labor and real estate markets.
Regarding the workforce in the labor market that is largely composed of low-skilled migrant workers mainly originating from Arabic and South Asian countries (e.g., Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India), the UAE authorities unexpectedly decided to apply restrictions on the issuance of work visas for migrant workers from “Arab Spring” countries for national security reasons (e.g., Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and Lebanon). This decision to stop issuing work visas prevented these migrant workers, who were looking for a better life in the UAE, to be recruited by firms. For the real estate market, the situation had been so far relatively protective for tenants as the owners of rental housing or business premises had the right to increase the rent amount by a maximum of 5% yearly. In November 2013, the UAE authorities surprisingly applied a new decree removing the “5%” historical limit on the increase of rent amounts to officially encourage real estate investments by showing more signs of protection to both foreign and local real estate investors. Given the limited retail spaces available, this deregulation added more inflationary pressures on the retail real estate market leading Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, to have some of the highest rents in the world (Online Appendix A1).
The Family Firm ASTO
The case selected for this study is an Egyptian family business operating in the hospitality industry, created in Abu Dhabi in 1981, 10 years after the creation of the UAE federation. Thus, this restaurant chain had been able to develop its activities almost since the birth of the UAE, which allows us to have a fair and global picture of the impact of regulatory evolutions on the family firm. For ethical and confidentiality reasons, the identifying details of the family firm and its members have been changed. In this article, we use ASTO as a pseudonym for this family firm. At the beginning of the adventure, ASTO consisted of only one restaurant. In 2006, the economic boom of the UAE and the relatively low rental costs of commercial real estate finally convinced Mr. Gaby to develop an organic growth strategy by opening four other restaurants. However, the development of the ASTO restaurant chain rapidly posed human resource issues. This forced Mr. Gaby, who owns 100% of the firm, to massively resort to Egyptian nonfamily resources to work in the restaurant chain at management and operational levels. Recruited directly from Egypt, these low-cost yet qualified Egyptian employees were for the most part headhunted by Mr. Gaby away from large hotels and restaurant chains in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. During this period, ASTO employed on average between 120 and 180 employees, mostly Egyptian nationals and its turnover was on average between US$4 and US$5 million.
The Faith-Led Context
Islam is the official religion of the UAE. In addition to the many mosques located throughout the country, there are places of worship available for people to practice other religions (Christian churches, Hindu temples, Sikh temples, and spaces for Jewish worship). Considered by their entourage as a respectable family and pious Muslims, Mr. Gaby and his family consider their religion as the cornerstone of both their personal lives and business activities. Although belief systems are at the core of each monotheistic religion, Islam has the particularity of being a complete way of life providing guidance for all walks of life. For instance, istishara is a common Islamic practice through which Muslims recite a prayer when they need guidance on any issue regarding their life (e.g., Kavas et al., 2020). In Muslim societies, Islam governs all one’s social and economic activities (Branine & Pollard, 2010), under the guidance of principles derived from the Holy Quran (words of God) and the Hadith (words of the Prophet Mohammed). For example, Muslim believers are encouraged to show patience and be pious, helpful, and useful to others to be loved and rewarded by God in the afterlife.
Consistent with their religious precepts, Mr. Gaby and his family seek to fulfill their obligations toward God by daily praying, giving Zakat (donate a certain portion of wealth each year to charitable causes), fasting during Ramadan, helping the people in need, performing the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and so on. Hence, Mr. Gaby made sure that the restaurant activities respected the family’s religious principles. For example, one of Mr. Gaby’s brothers reported that “He always refused to sell products forbidden in Islam, such as shisha (an instrument for vaporizing and smoking flavored tobacco) and alcoholic beverages, despite their high profit margins” (uncle MA, informal discussion, August 7, 2015). When Mr. Gaby was asked about this decision, his daughter Bianca recalls that he told her, “I thank God for what he gave us and I am totally satisfied with what I already have.” ASTO therefore represents an excellent illustration of the influence of religiosity on the business family in a region where more than 90% of businesses are family-owned (Basco, 2017).
Focal Case
In a sensitive geopolitical context, we were allowed to live and observe the responses of this UAE-based Egyptian family firm to environmental jolts, such as disruptive regulatory decisions (Online Appendix A2). Access was made possible by the privileged position of the ethnographer in the organizational chart of this firm, which provided him with practically unrestricted access to the family business’s life. The ethnographer played a critical role as he had simultaneously family and professional ties with this family firm. In 2011, only a few weeks after his marriage with Bianca, the founder’s daughter, he was recruited as an internal organizational consultant to help the family firm in its strategic development. Taken aback by disruptive regulatory evolutions in the UAE during the “Arab Spring” period, the ethnographer was in an ideal position to observe the daily actions of the family firm’s members from the inside. Throughout the 6 years, the ethnographer played the role of the participant insider. He was regularly interviewed and challenged by the coauthors of this article. We hence used a discovery-oriented interpretive approach (Locke, 2011), highlighting the “insider” perspective of the informants and the ethnographer who acted as a participant observer while considering the coauthors’ “outsider” researchers’ views, helping describe the experienced phenomena from a theoretical perspective (Bartunek & Louis, 1996). The ethnographer’s “insider” involvement in the process was priceless for capturing subtle, tacit, and complex issues describing the business family resilience process.
Data Collection
Most of the data were collected via ethnography between July 2011 and January 2018. An ethnographic approach is especially apropos for examining complex social phenomena, such as interrelationships between religion and business family resilience. We were able to develop a holistic understanding of the real-life events occurring within the “everyday settings” in which ASTO tried to survive disruptive regulatory changes (Fletcher & Adiguna, 2020; Yin, 2009). In addition to data collected from participant observations, we employed various methods of data collection (e.g., formal interviews and secondary data) and used multiple sources to get several stakeholders’ perspectives over two distinct phases (Figure 1).
Family Tree and Main Informants.
July 2011 to September 2012
During this first phase, the ethnographer used secondary data and conducted general observations and informal discussions with family and nonfamily stakeholders. Once the key issues were identified, the ethnographer conducted a dozen of semi-structured interviews with the family members to obtain their perspective (63 pages). This included Mr. Gaby (two interviews), the eldest son (two interviews), the two daughters (four interviews), and the son-in-law (two interviews). Using an interview guide (Online Appendix A3), the ethnographer adopted a semi-structured interview methodology in which the main themes were the regional political instability and recent regulatory changes in the country, their main impacts on the family firm’s activity, and the potential solutions and perspectives. These face-to-face meetings lasted between 30 and 45 minutes.
October 2012 to January 2018
During the second phase, our study framework allowed us to conduct extensive participant observations. The ethnographer’s formal role in both the business and family systems granted him the ability to have strong social interactions with the actors. Two hundred sixty-nine pages of fieldnotes were taken during, or straight after, participant observation and informal interviews (Goffman, 1961). The ASTO family firm members speak primarily in Arabic. However, being bilingual, the ethnographer was able to translate the verbatims into English. Most of the observations and informal discussions with the family members took place in ASTO branches. Our research process was completed after 6 years when we reached theoretical saturation (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), meaning that no new insights were generated. To encourage reflexivity in the data analysis, the ethnographer also kept a personal journal of “headnotes” in which he recorded his own experience, worries, and reflections (186 pages). As the emphasis in this article is on the business family members’ responses to environmental jolts, we have included some references to these headnotes to help locate the ethnographer in the context of his fieldwork. We also sought to show that the ethnographer, as an in-law, was not immunized from the effect of what he and other family members witnessed on a daily basis, as we explain next.
Data Analysis
One of the challenges of writing ethnography is that of drawing interpretations from observations such that they lead to a convincing theoretical explanation (Locke & Golden-Biddle, 1997). Hence, we chose to analyze the above-noted ethnographic data using a grounded theory approach through a cyclical process. Specifically, the analysis followed the protocols of an iterative process of data collection and analysis through which theoretical insights are developed by continuously comparing emerging insights with previously established findings (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) until a deeper, empirically grounded explanation of the business family resilience emerged. We also completed this process by examining the collected data against the ethnographer’s preunderstanding based on his own experience in the setting, as well as against extant theory (Mantere & Ketokivi, 2013). Hence, our analysis consisted of two key phases, described next.
Phase 1 Occurred During the Fieldwork
Throughout the fieldwork, we used the ethnographer’s experience to become aware of possible topics and theories that may help structure and interpret the data. As a result, the analysis process began with a series of discussions to understand the nature of the ethnographer’s own feelings and their possible relation to those of the family with whom he was embedded. At the beginning of the analysis process, we came up with several topics, including the “surprise” of the ethnographer when confronted with disruptive regulatory changes, fear due to uncertainty, realization of the critical role of religious beliefs, optimism and pessimism, and solidarity with the family. When these feelings were also reflected in the fieldnotes, we decided to use them as entry points for subsequent systematic data analysis.
To verify the extent to and ways in which the ethnographer’s personal feelings were shared by business family members, we used two means. First, we systematically compared the content of the ethnographer’s headnotes and fieldnotes, noting discrepancies, and thus the feelings that seemed unique to the ethnographer. Second, the coauthors played a key reflexive role, by actively challenging and questioning the validity of emerging insights in ongoing discussions about data interpretation and theory development. Therefore, this helped us reach the critical distance needed for moving from our data to general theoretical explanation (Cunliffe, 2010).
Phase 2 Was Conducted Upon Completion of the Fieldwork
Following this extensive fieldwork experience, we decided to analyze the emerging themes of our ethnographic data more deeply, and specifically the key function of religious role expectations.
Analyzing Themes in Adaptation to Adversity
This step involved analyzing the data in a more nuanced manner. Collected data were categorized and coded in relation to the adaptation of the business family to environmental jolts. We decided to focus on events—that is, observations of actual events, or stories of current or past events—that were associated with direct expressions of adaptation (words, perceptions, terms, and reactions) or appeared purposely chosen to convey the business family’s adaptation to the threatening character associated with an environmental jolt. The fieldnotes were coded separately by the authors as a basis for discussion on particularly striking examples and on what they might tell us about the adaptation of the business family to environmental jolts. We aggregated and connected such examples to three overarching themes as potential family responses. We then went back to the data to identify the most direct expressions of each of these three themes, namely, Family Spiritual Resignation, Family Capital Mobilization, and Family Optimal Arbitration (Online Appendix A4).
Following the same process described earlier, we reviewed the data with the aim to understand “how things work” (Wolcott, 1994) by looking for other data that seemed to be linked to the indicators of “adaptation.” Consequently, we used the family resilience and family firm literature pertaining to the family responses or reactions when facing adversity. This enabled us to code for the presence of a well-known key dynamic family resilience process anchored into belief systems (Walsh, 2016), which led us to identify specific ways through which religiosity played a role in the support of the business family to resist and rebound from adversity, as explained next.
Analyzing the Function of Role Expectations in a Faith-Led Context
In analyzing the role of religious context in the way the business family adapts to environmental jolts, we first divided our data into two temporal brackets—the resistance and rebound phases—which define the family resilience process (Walsh, 2003). Then, following the work of Branine and Pollard (2010), we developed lists of religious prescribed practices, rules, norms, and values that are particularly critical in Islam to identify the stakeholders’ religious role expectations during the resistance and rebound phases. In this faith-led context, we considered the “Feeling of God’s Presence” and “Showing Mercy to Others” as the main sources of four religious prescriptions: Faith in Destiny, Patience, Mutual Assistance, and Trust (Table 1).
Illustrative Examples of Stakeholders’ Religious Role Expectations in Relation to Dimensions of Religiosity.
Note. FSR = Family Spiritual Resignation; FOA = Family Optimal Arbitration; FCM = Family Capital Mobilization.
As a second step, we used these lists to screen our analysis of the three business family’s adaptation themes discussed earlier (see Online Appendix A4). We reviewed these for the presence of religious prescribed practices, norms, and values, as a basis for building an emerging understanding of the function of religious role expectations in the business family resilience. This analysis process allowed us to identify specific ways through which the stakeholders’ religious role expectations affect the business family’s responses to an environmental jolt. Figure 2 presents an illustration of this analysis.
Example of Analysis of the Role of Faith-Led Context in the Business Family Resilience.
Theorizing the Role of Faith-Led Context in the Business Family Resilience
As a final step, we proceeded to theorize the interrelations between the main elements of our empirical analysis by engaging the literature on family resilience (e.g., Patterson, 2002; Walsh, 2016). The research topics of “Beliefs,” as responses to adversity in general, are particularly prevalent and directly related to the faith-led context. We were drawn to the concept of “family belief system” as a possible root cause of resilience in faith-led family firms: “Family belief systems powerfully influence how we view a crisis, our suffering, and our options” (Walsh, 2003, p. 6). In the faith-led family firm context, this concept pointed us to the importance of noneconomic concerns as the key to better understand the function of religious role expectations in business family resilience. This enabled us to develop the model depicted in Figure 3 around which we structure our grounded process model articulated in the “Findings” section.
Conceptual Faith-Based Framework of the Business Family Resilience to Environmental Jolt.
Findings
The iterative process between data analysis and literature review resulted in a grounded model of the business family resilience to environmental jolts, revealing the influence of religiosity on the business family resilience process. In this section, we provide evidence of the three main themes of our grounded model: Family Spiritual Resignation, Family Capital Mobilization, and Family Optimal Arbitration. These themes incorporate three sets of responses in chronological order. They represent how the business family sequentially resists and rebounds from environmental jolts. Next, we discuss each of these in turn, followed, in the next section, by an analysis of the key function of religious role expectations in these responses.
Theme 1: Family Spiritual Resignation
When analyzing our ethnographic data, a general pattern emerged at the appearance of environmental jolts. This refers to the period during which the family members developed a form of resistance by paradoxically resigning themselves to the new regulatory context and drawing particularly on their religious beliefs. While resistance can be passive resignation (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2010), we noted a prevalent passive response to the sudden emergence of disruptive regulatory changes that we labeled as “Family Spiritual Resignation.” In this context, this first set of responses from the business family was supported by three critical subthemes: Expressing Denial, Acknowledging our Destiny, and Hoping for Improvements.
Expressing Denial
Following the emergence of sudden and unprecedented regulatory changes in the UAE labor and real estate markets, our data revealed that the business family was struggling to acknowledge the disruptive character of these regulatory decisions. This family resistance to loss of the known by moving to the unknown plunged the family firm in a sort of organizational inertia for several weeks. This denial of reality was supported by the religious beliefs of the business family convinced to always be under the protection of God, as illustrated by countless comments, including, “It is good, Insha’Allah (God willing), God is with us, don’t worry about these rules, God will help us to overcome any situation!” (Mr. Gaby, informal discussion, April 17, 2012). Meanwhile, other family members preferred to ignore these new rules, saying, “Yes, I heard about this story of rent cap removal, but I think these are rumors, I don’t believe it . . . Everything will be alright, God willing!” (Rachel, informal discussion, November 20, 2013).
Acknowledging Our Destiny
The unprecedented situation in the UAE labor and real estate markets, progressively and strongly affected the activities (see Online Appendix A2):
We don’t have enough staff to do the job; and it is difficult to organize our work. . . the customers are complaining about the delivery time because we don’t have enough drivers . . . they say that it takes too long and the service in the dine-in room is terrible . . . due to the lack of waiters . . . I have already interviewed several candidates in Egypt ready to join the company in the UAE . . . but work visas for Egyptians are still blocked. (Mr. Gaby, family meeting, February 6, 2013)
1
Our data show that the regulatory evolutions affected both the business and the business family members who severely suffered from the new barriers to recruitment and the increases in rents. We observe that they tended to seek refuge in religion to finally acknowledge this disruptive situation as a part of destiny decided by God. For instance,
It is not only us who are impacted by these regulatory changes, we are all impacted, I just discussed about it with the restaurant next door . . . all these recruitment problems and rent increases are our destiny, good or bad, we have to accept it. (Tonio, son-in-law, informal discussion, September 24, 2013)
This closeness to God is reflected through a search for appeasement and the fact that, ultimately, the success of the family firm is in the hands of God who alone knows the destiny of the company: “We are Muslims, we cannot be pessimistic, we must continue to believe in God and our destiny” (Mr. Gaby, family meeting, September 2, 2013).
Hoping for Improvements
Numerous observations show that the faith of family members keeps them hoping that this critical situation will improve with the help of God:
We wait for the visas to open, with the help of God everything will work out (Mathiew, informal discussion, November 28, 2013); What else do you want to do except keep faith in God? (Bianca, informal discussion, August 3, 2014).
We notice also this hopefulness was further reinforced when information and rumors emerged from the family network (e.g., nonfamily employees, friends, customers, and suppliers) saying that a rent cap will be reimposed soon or the work visa restrictions would be lifted in the next few weeks. For instance, our fieldnotes show that some loyal customers who worked in the UAE public administrations informed Mr. Gaby that this situation should be resolved shortly. This kind of news incited the family members to perform additional religious invocations and prayers: “Oh my God, let this be true!” (Rachel, observation, September 30, 2014). On January 18, 2015, the new Egyptian President Al Sissi travelled to Abu Dhabi for his first official visit to the UAE. This visit marked a renewal in relations between the two countries. It was also hope for the family members to see better days.
Theme 2: Family Capital Mobilization
After a period during which the family firm withstood the events, Mr. Gaby and his family were forced to react powerfully to survive. Considering various solutions to rebound from disruptive regulatory changes, the business family decided to mobilize internal and external resources by taking into account religious criteria. Hence, the second predominant pattern that emerged from our ethnographical data is the mobilization of resources from stakeholders with a religiosity similar to that of the business family. This second prevalent response, which we labeled Family Capital Mobilization, was supported by two critical subthemes: Envisioning Potential Solutions and Active Waiting for Assistance.
Envisioning Potential Solutions
The disruptive regulatory changes created organizational difficulties and financial struggles that pushed the business family to discuss possible solutions to put in place. We observe that the credibility of the solutions proposed depended on the capacity and the chances to get help from various internal and external stakeholders. Among the criteria discussed, the level of religiosity of the stakeholders to be solicited was taken into account. By envisioning the different potential solutions, these reflexions were often oriented toward the question of the stakeholder’s religiosity and its alignment with that of the business family. The following is an empirical vignette that illustrates these experiences:
I was eating my lunch in Sharkiya branch when I caught a discussion between Bianca and her sister Rachel next to my table. They were discussing the problem of staff shortage. Rachel said, “In addition to rent problems, we do not have enough employees to work in our restaurants. We need to find people to work or we will soon have to close Sharkiya branch.” During the exchange, different employee names were cited to work free extra-hours. “Ibrahim? . . .Yes, I think that he will accept to work two shifts. He is a good guy, pious and has been working for many years. I am sure that he will accept to help us.” At the same time, some names were categorically rejected: “Are you kidding? Miko? But if we ask him that, he will immediately ask for extra-money in addition to his salary. Only money matters to him!” (Bianca and Rachel, observation, April 9, 2014).
By envisioning potential solutions, the business family sought to anticipate the reactions of stakeholders, including those sharing a similar religiosity, and, in turn, implicitly expected positive reactions guided by religious principles as explained next.
Active Waiting for Assistance
Rather than asking directly for help from stakeholders or forcing them to do something, we noticed that the business family first explained the situation to various internal and external stakeholders, before explicitly or implicitly soliciting their help, and letting them make their own decisions while expecting positive outcomes. We found that these decisions were based not only on strong trust relationships between the actors, but also on their reciprocal willingness to help each other as requested by God. For instance, we witnessed that, when necessary, business family members adopted extra-role behaviors to compensate for staff shortages, as highlighted by Rachel:
I discussed with Tonio last week about our need for a cashier in Macha branch for the morning shift. After reflexion, he finally agreed to work as cashier until the usual one comes back from vacation in fifteen days. (Rachel, informal discussion, April 16, 2015)
Moreover, after several family meetings where many financial problems encountered by the firm were presented, business family members agreed to no longer receive salaries or significantly reduce their level of remuneration without complaining. Regarding the founder, Mr. Gaby decided to sell a few acres of his lands in Egypt for cash that he injected into the business. Similarly, Bianca and Rachel decided to accept significant financial sacrifices, as explained by Bianca: “You know, my sister and I, we gave all our savings to pay the rent of Touba branch” (informal discussion, December 6, 2015). In the same vein, some family members who do not work in the family firm participated in these financial efforts as well, as illustrated below:
I met with our cousin Ashley yesterday night, we had some discussions and I explained to her our situation. She proposed to lend us a sum of money. . . Aunt Anna is very sad about what is happening to us, so she decided to sell her gold jewelry to lend us cash. (Rachel, informal discussion, October 23, 2015)
All these personal sacrifices were realized with the aim of alleviating the organizational and financial difficulties of the firm as well as the family suffering. Even if they are not sure they will be reimbursed one day, they are convinced that, at least, God will reward them, as illustrated below:
We know that in such situations the probability of getting reimbursed by our father is low, but we can be proud of ourselves because we chose to support our family and God will reward us anyway. (Bianca, informal discussion, December 6, 2015)
Similar to the family members, we also observed an active waiting for assistance from nonfamily employees who share the same religious beliefs with the business family members and have strong trust relationships with them, as illustrated here:
When I asked a nonfamily employee to explain to me the extra efforts he was performing, he showed me his hands and said,
Look at these hands (he shows me the palms of his hands), they are burnt because I have carried fridges since this morning while other colleagues are mocking me because I am not supposed to do that . . . but even if that was the case, I do it for God and to help the company, I swear.
He stopped and whispered to me, “Among all the employees working here, some fear God more than others. You will notice that some have a good heart and want to help during this difficult situation” (nonfamily employee, informal discussion, September 15, 2016).
The network of suppliers and customers built up over decades also allowed the family firm to mobilize some resources. The observational data, for instance, contained many offhand comments, such as
The meat supplier agreed to be paid in three months, we know him since Mr. Gaby has been dealing with this pious man for several years, he trusts us. He even lent us his credit card to use it for paying our expenses (nonfamily member, Informal discussion, January 13, 2016). One of our loyal Egyptian customers proposed to help my father by lending him some money to deal with our current problems with the banks. (Bianca, informal discussion, October 29, 2015)
In summary, what characterizes this second set of responses, labeled Family Capital Mobilization, is the key influence of religion in the mobilization of internal and external stakeholders by the business family. However, when the outcomes of this mobilization appear insufficient—leading the family firm to still be unable to solve critical problems, such as unpaid supplier invoices—we observe a third set of responses that we labeled Family Optimal Arbitration, as explained next.
Theme 3: Family Optimal Arbitration
Sometimes, we observed that the business family was finding it increasingly difficult to rebound from these disruptive regulatory changes leading the firm to additional organizational and financial difficulties. Typically, it was during these moments that the business family members increasingly wondered about the business’s future by considering spiritual reflections. Hence, this third set of responses, labeled Family Optimal Arbitration, was supported by two critical subthemes: Selling the Family Firm as God Asks and Keeping the Family Firm With the Help of God.
Selling the Family Firm as God Asks
When faced with bad news or unsolved problems, such as a final reminder for payment or the failure to convince a supplier to further delay the payment of a bill, family members often interpreted these kinds of situations as signs sent by God. A discussion with the eldest son highlights this point:
As any company around the world, we can go bankrupt . . . I disagree with Rachel, bankruptcy is not a bad word. All these cumulative problems we are facing are signs from God telling us that we should give up this adventure and start another one elsewhere! (Mathiew, informal discussion, December 20, 2016)
By interpreting these unsolved problems as signs from God, Mr. Gaby and his eldest son found it increasingly hard to have confidence in the future of the family firm:
This country has changed too much to hope for improvement in the next few years. Too many new rules, too many new taxes, and a labour law that does not allow us to work like before. (Mathiew, informal discussion, October 3, 2017) All these problems we are facing are not coming from nowhere, I prayed istishara. God is sending us messages and I have the feeling that it would be better to sell the restaurants before it’s too late and focus on the new coffee business in Cairo (Egypt). (Mr. Gaby, family meeting, November 30, 2017)
Keeping the Family Firm With the Help of God
The idea of selling the family business to a third party is not shared by the majority of the business family members. Some of them do not accept this hypothesis preferring instead to adopt a positive attitude toward the future, as requested by God. Specifically, we observed that the daughters and sons-in-law still hoped, with the help of God, to save the family business although the financial situation was becoming increasingly untenable: “Insha’Allah everything will work out, we will make more sacrifices but with the help of God we will be able to sort out our problems” (Rachel, informal discussion, September 20, 2017). In this context of arbitration, our observational data highlight the support provided by key stakeholders, such as nonfamily employees sharing similar religiosity with the business family: “We have to keep the activity, we cannot give up, with the Help of God we will solve all these problems, we can do it!” (nonfamily employee, informal discussion, January 5, 2017). We also noticed that the business family was predominantly worried by the negative consequences of the loss of the family firm on the internal and external stakeholders. Precisely, numerous discussions between family members show their concern of not being able to honor the debts while God asks to respect one’s commitments:
“Ok, you want to sell, let’s go! How much do you think you can get today?” Rachel asked her father during a family meeting. She added,
Do you want to close? Let’s go! And after?! Who will pay the overdue salaries we owe to the employees? Who will reimburse the bank loans? Who will pay what we owe our suppliers? Tell me, who!? It is Haram (a sin forbidden by God), we have to keep our promises. We cannot close and leave as thieves!! (Rachel, family meeting, October 9, 2017)
The Key Function of Religious Role Expectations on the Business Family Resilience
By describing these three sets of responses as part of the business family resilience process (see Online Appendix A4), we sought to understand the roots and consequences of these responses by focusing on the impact of religious role expectations across the family firm’s stakeholders (see Table 1). While the development of self-image, self-definition, and appraisal of self-worth is influenced by the groups and ideals that an individual identifies with (Stryker & Burke, 2000), the family firm’s stakeholders affiliated to a religion expect their members to espouse certain forms of role performance that may influence their behaviors (Fang et al., 2013). For example, researchers mention various behaviors such as the way individuals cope with negative life events (Pargament et al., 1992) or helping behavior (Batson & Gray, 1981). Consistent with these behaviors, we spotted two predominant dimensions of Muslim religiosity (El-Menouar, 2014) through which religious role expectations have been noticed in our ethnographic data: “Feeling of God’s Presence” and “Showing Mercy to Others.”
Regarding the dimension called “Feeling of God’s Presence,” Muslims are required to worship God as if they see Him and He sees them. By continuously struggling to work toward attaining God’s satisfaction, Muslims know that God has created all things within destiny and that which befalls them does so solely because He so wishes. As a result, this first dimension is related to two main role expectations in Islam, namely, Faith in Destiny and Patience. Precisely, Muslims are expected to have faith in destiny decided by God and to be patient when confronted by life’s challenges. The second dimension, called “Showing Mercy to Others,” is related to two main role expectations in Islam, namely, Mutual assistance and Trust. Muslims are required to show mercy to those on Earth as mentioned in the following hadith: “Be merciful to those on the Earth and the One in the heavens will have mercy upon you.” As a result, Muslims are expected to be helpful to others as mentioned in the following hadith:
Whoever relieves a believer’s distress of the distressful aspects of this world, Allah will rescue him from a difficulty of the difficulties of the Hereafter. Whoever alleviates [the situation of] one in dire straits who cannot repay his debt, Allah will alleviate his lot in both this world and in the Hereafter.
Moreover, while trust is a core value governing social relationships, Islam strongly condemns any betrayal or treason as mentioned, for instance, in the following hadith: “God says, ‘There are three people whom I shall be their opponent on the Day of Judgment: (One of them being) a man who hires a labourer, makes use of his service then does not give him his wages.’”
Based on this body of evidence, in the next subsection we synthesize our findings to provide a comprehensive portrait of the business family resilience process in a faith-led family firm context.
Toward an Integrated View of Religiosity and the Business Family Resilience Process
Through the analysis of our ethnographical data, we noticed that religiosity represented a critical resource used by the business family to resist an environmental jolt and then to rebound by leveraging internal and external resources. Specifically, we observed that the religiosity dimension called “Feeling of God’s Presence” predominantly influenced the “Resistance” phase through the Family Spiritual Resignation, whereas the religiosity dimension called “Showing Mercy to Others” predominantly influenced the “Rebound” phase through the Family Capital Mobilization. Next, we further explain the influence of these two religiosity dimensions on the business family resilience process.
Resistance
Phase: Feeling of God’s Presence Acts as a Source for Family Spiritual Resignation
We found that the nature of Family Spiritual Resignation is predominantly and directly related to a specific religiosity dimension that we call “Feeling of God’s Presence.” While most families find strength, comfort, and guidance in adversity through connections with their religious traditions (Walsh, 2003), our ethnographic data show that the controlling family’s religiosity allows it to passively resist by encouraging the business family members to adopt behaviors in accordance with a specific form of religious role expectations in Islam. Specifically, our data show that a strong Faith in Destiny and Patience act as the main sources of Family Spiritual Resignation. The following quote symbolizes this point: “May God help us, we do our best and let God do the rest. Don’t worry, everything is already written” (Rachel, informal discussion, April 21, 2014).
With time, instead of being trapped in a powerless victim position, the business family decides to find solutions to the challenges, overcome the problems encountered, and ultimately ensure the firm’s survival. As resilience involves both reactivity to adverse stimuli and subsequent coping efforts over time (Fisher et al., 2019), the next step of the business family resilience process is thus the rebound phase (Walsh, 2016) through the Family Capital Mobilization.
Rebound Phase: Showing Mercy to Others Acts as a Source for Family Capital Mobilization
We find that the specific nature of Family Capital Mobilization is directly related to a second religiosity dimension that we call “Showing Mercy to Others.” While the quality of the social relationships between members of a group, in terms of levels of trust, identification, and mutual obligations (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998), affects the resources and performance of any organization (Bird & Zellweger, 2018), our data show that the capacity of the business family to rebound from environmental jolts is mainly due to the religious role expectations of both the business family and nonfamily stakeholders, such as employees, customers, and suppliers. In a faith-led context, the homogeneous religiosity among these groups of stakeholders encourages them to pursue noneconomic goals, such as God’s satisfaction in offering Mutual Assistance through Trust relationships. Consequently, “Showing Mercy to Others” as a second form of religiosity acts as the main source of Family Capital Mobilization. The following empirical vignette illuminates some of these events:
November 12, 2016. With uncles, aunts, and cousins, we are having dinner with the family at the biggest table of the restaurant. We talk about various topics, including the financial situation of the company. In the middle of the exchanges between the different actors, I discreetly whispered in the ear of one of the uncles sitting next to me: “It represents huge amounts!” He responded, “Do you know that in our religion you have to help others, especially the family, which has priority over everyone else?” I asked him what he meant. He replied, “By lending money, we help the firm but also we hope to be rewarded by God for our deeds.”
Surprisingly, our findings also revealed several important details about the outcomes following the response labeled Family Capital Mobilization. Although helping another in need is recognized as a universal human value, our findings show that the resolution of some problems, thanks to the help of stakeholders (e.g., additional financial or human resources), fostered the religiosity dimension called “Showing Mercy to Others” and consequently increased the chances of finding solutions to other problems. In other words, when a stakeholder agrees to provide resources to solve a problem, this results in a reinforcement of the religious role expectations—mutual assistance and trust relationships—and, in turn, increases the chances to mobilize additional resources with this stakeholder when needed. This “virtue circle” was particularly observed during the rebound phase as illustrated below:
November 9, 2015. I see Rachel calling a waiter and telling him discretely: “Do you see the customer at this table? Do not give him a bill.” Bianca asks Rachel why? She replied, “God bless him, he is a respectable and honest person who lent us money and is continuously helping us for free in all the paperwork related to the work—visas for our employees—no need to make him pay for his meals.”
However, following the Family Capital Mobilization, if problems are not yet resolved, we also observe an additional response in the business family resilience process that we call Family Optimal Arbitration. While resilient families “build on small successes and use failures as learning experiences” (Walsh, 2003, p. 13), the strains of persistent and recurrent challenges over time lead to unsolved problems that create doubts in the business family regarding the future of the family firm, as explained in the next section.
Family Optimal Arbitration: A Continuous Dilemma
Similar to Family Spiritual Resignation, our data show that the specific nature of Family Optimal Arbitration is mainly related to a specific religiosity dimension, which is “Feeling of God’s Presence.” Our data show that when confronted by persistent turbulence over time, the Feeling of God’s Presence, through both a strong Faith in Destiny and Patience, fosters Family Optimal Arbitration. When the family firm is still confronted with unsolved problems, the business family is confronted by a continuous dilemma. Our findings paradoxically suggest that the Feeling of God’s Presence led the business family to consider two main contradictory decisions: the willingness to show resilience efforts (hold on) and the desire to sell the family firm to a third party (let go). This is illustrated in the following vignette from the ethnographer’s personal notes:
June 22, 2017. It is quite strange. I always feel the same paradox when the family is experiencing difficulties; the family members are often faced with the same dilemma: to give up by following a better destiny chosen by God or continue the efforts while hoping for God’s support. When they see that, despite their efforts, problems keep emerging, the faith in a destiny chosen by God and the patience to overcome challenges decided by God are still there.
To help interpret the various concepts and their relationships in our data, we constructed Figure 4, which graphically summarizes and generalizes the main findings that emerged from our empirical analysis.
The Influence of Religious Role Expectations on the Business Family Resilience Process.
Discussion and Conclusion
Despite the critical role of family belief systems as a key process of family resilience, there remains much work to be done in terms of understanding resilience as it occurs in family firms. Prior research theorized and empirically tested the role of SEW, social capital, and familiness on family business resilience (e.g., Campopiano et al., 2019; Conz et al., 2020; Smith, 2016; Zachary, 2017). However, we have a limited understanding of the micro-level mechanisms behind the deployment of these unique family firm attributes. While it is widely recognized that family firms may develop an idiosyncratic resilience due to the family resilience, this ethnographic study was motivated by the desire to address a gap in the family business literature, notably a lack of understanding of the influence of religiosity on the business family resilience. Our analysis was guided by the overarching query of how religiosity affects the business family responses to environmental jolts, such as disruptive regulatory changes. This study offers three core sets of contributions to the family business and resilience literatures as well as avenues for future research.
First, by revealing that religiosity is a key element in family firm resilience, we contribute to knowledge on what makes family firm resilience distinctive (Chrisman et al., 2011). This longitudinal ethnographic study highlights the critical role of religious role expectations as an important foundation of business families’ decisions and behaviors during hard times. By doing so, we contribute to sharpening our picture of business families (e.g., Frank et al., 2019) and develop a more holistic understanding of the business family resilience process in faith-led contexts (Astrachan et al., 2020). By adopting a religious perspective at the family level, the particularity of the contextual setting of our study offers new insights on the potential responses to external threats and thus further extends our understanding of family firm heterogeneity in terms of resilience (Campopiano et al., 2019; Chua et al., 2012; Rau et al., 2019). While resilience in the family business context refers to the ability of the family system to resist and rebound from adversity (Cruz et al., 2019; Danes, 2006; Walsh, 2003, 2016), we identify three sets of resilient responses (Family Spiritual Resignation, Family Capital Mobilization, and Family Optimal Arbitration) to advance a religious-based foundation for business family resilience.
Second, our findings also contribute to the mainstream resilience literature by proposing a process-focused model of how business family resilience develops over time. This 6-year ethnographic study helps answer the calls to take into consideration the temporal dynamics to better apprehend the adversity triggers, behavioral mechanisms of responding to adversity, and resilience promoting factors and outcomes (e.g., Fisher et al., 2019). A more careful account of resilience in family firms through the identification of resilience sources, mechanisms, and outcomes among business family members would benefit the development of theories on the distinctive behaviors of family firms.
Third, our study also adds to our knowledge of social capital, SEW, and familiness in a context of sudden environmental changes. While a social capital perspective acknowledges the contribution of the “bonding” and “bridging” capital to increase family firm survival chances (e.g., Sharma, 2008; Wilson et al., 2013), our study offers insight into how religiosity affects the interactions with stakeholders when faced with adversity. As adversity generates a crisis of meaning (Walsh, 2003), our findings suggest not only that religious role expectations help business families resist by making meaning of a crisis situation, but they also help them rebound through the mobilization of both human and financial resources. Religious role expectations appear to be a critical source of business family resilience by leveraging the resources needed for the firm’s survival. What is more, our study contributes to highlighting the pivotal function of religious role expectations in the interplay between social capital, SEW (i.e., the pursuit of noneconomic goals), and “familiness” as a resource. Our study illuminates how religious role expectations reinforce the resistance and rebound of the business family members by adopting behaviors in accordance with religious prescriptions. Religious role expectations are rooted in the principle of mutual interdependence between different members of a religious community (Lichterman, 2008) while nurturing a sense of commitment based on a widely and deeply shared system of beliefs (Gümüsay, 2019). As a result, our study contributes to the social capital and SEW literatures by showing how social relationships between the business family and stakeholders are motivated at least in part by noneconomic goals derived from complementary religiosities such as the pursuit of God’s satisfaction (Fang et al., 2013; Mitchell et al., 2011). Involving both family and nonfamily members who share common religious beliefs, these internal and external stakeholders seek not only to support the firm during times of adversity (Sirmon & Hitt, 2003) but also to fulfill their respective religious role expectations in the quest of a common and higher purpose. In this context, our empirical evidence illustrates how the pursuit of noneconomic goals—such as those resulting from religious beliefs of the business family—may influence the way family firms appropriate the economic and noneconomic value that is tied to their social relationships with internal and external stakeholders (Zellweger et al., 2019). Hence, our study sheds light on the key function of religious role expectations in the instrumentality of social relationships. Religion as a form of social capital is a powerful force in resource mobilization (Putnam, 1995). Our study thus contributes to a deeper understanding of how religiosity, as a key driver of social capital and SEW (Kellermanns, 2013), influences the way business families leverage their “familiness” to resist and rebound from environmental jolts (e.g., Astrachan et al., 2020; Smith, 2016). The business family’s religiosity acts as a catalyst in the exploitation of social capital, SEW, and “familiness.” Our ethnographic study thus helps answer the call by Zellweger et al. (2010) for research investigating mechanisms that may help family firms leverage their “familiness” as a resource. In a context of adversity, religious role expectations create an environment that bonds business family members with internal and external stakeholders, thereby boosting their willingness to provide the necessary resources to the business family with the aim to satisfy God. Finally, our study contributes to the debate on SEW by echoing some scholars’ observations who propose an “extended view” of SEW (e.g., Kammerlander, 2021; Miller & Le Breton-Miller, 2014; Nason et al., 2019). While the traditional SEW perspective considers that only business family members can develop SEW (i.e., the pursuit of noneconomic goals), our study extends our understanding of SEW by considering that external stakeholders may also develop noneconomic goals with the business family members due to similar religious role expectations.
Limitations and Future Research Directions
Although instructive, the present work presents limitations. First, the results of this ethnographic study are context-dependent. Its focus on one family firm, one industrial setting, and one country limits its generalizability. That being said, we contend that the identified sets of responses are applicable beyond the focal context of our research. Indeed, we can find several similarities between Muslim beliefs and those from other monotheistic Abrahamic religions (i.e., Christianism and Judaism) that may contribute to the development of resilience among business families. Consequently, we believe that business families inspired by other monotheist religious beliefs can adopt similar responses to adversity.
While family firms numerically dominate throughout the world (La Porta et al., 1999), at least a significant number of them grant an important and active role to religion (Paterson et al., 2013). In this context, several implications for future research and practice arise from this study. To test our findings, it would be noteworthy to carry out multiple case studies to conduct comparative work in the UAE or in other countries and regions where the cultural, religious, and political contexts are more or less similar. Ideally, it would be interesting to conduct further ethnographic, longitudinal, and real-time studies to investigate the responses of faith-led family firms facing turbulent environments to test and enrich our emergent model. In addition, our study opens promising research avenues for a deeper understanding of family firm heterogeneity by analyzing the influence of religiosity on resilience in faith-led organizations. To this end, our study emphasizes the key function of religious role expectations that could be particularly useful during stressful situations encountered by family firms. Future research is needed to explore religious role expectations to identify their different dimensions, sources, and outcomes.
While the response labeled Family Spiritual Resignation sheds light on the difficulties associated with family firms’ adaptation to rapidly reforming institutional contexts because of their stronger inertia compared with nonfamily firms (Banalieva et al., 2015; Gedajlovic et al., 2012), future studies might further investigate the religious-based mechanisms underpinning this laissez faire attitude. To do that, future research could use one family science theory called ABCX model of family stress (McCubbin & Patterson, 1983), by focusing on the influence of religiosity on the business family’s perception of the stressor event. Moreover, regarding the third set of responses labeled Family Optimal Arbitration, future research could investigate how religious motives may influence the affective and financial motives to better understand business exit decisions (Chirico et al., 2020).
Supplemental Material
sj-docx-1-fbr-10.1177_08944865221095323 – Supplemental material for Looking at the Sky: An Ethnographic Study of How Religiosity Influences Business Family Resilience
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-fbr-10.1177_08944865221095323 for Looking at the Sky: An Ethnographic Study of How Religiosity Influences Business Family Resilience by Ali Azouz, Nicolas Antheaume and Brigitte Charles-Pauvers in Family Business Review
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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