Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Family involvement and organizational ambidexterity in later-generation family businesses

Family involvement and organizational ambidexterity in later-generation family businesses Purpose– How family businesses (FBs) manage to survive in the long term is still not well understood in FB research. A promising concept to explain survivability, that is currently heavily discussed in the management literature is organizational ambidexterity (OA) – the ability to balance exploring and exploiting activities at the same time. However, FB research has not yet taken sufficient advantage of the potential of OA to contribute to explaining the ability of later-generation FBs to survive. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach– Using central tenets of agency theory, this conceptual paper draws together findings from the FB literature and the OA literature to create a framework for the relationship between family involvement and the ability to reach high levels of OA. Findings– Seven propositions are developed which suggest that the level of family involvement in ownership and management affect the ability of later-generation FBs to reach high levels of OA. They further suggest that the number of family shareholders, the existence of majority family shareholders, and generational involvement of the controlling family in management moderate these relationships. Originality/value– This is the first paper to theoretically analyze OA in later-generation FBs. The seven propositions and avenues for further research presented in this paper are intended to motivate FB research to take a closer look at OA. This may be crucial to better explaining and predicting one of business-owning families’ most important goals: the long-term survival of the FB. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Management Decision Emerald Publishing

Family involvement and organizational ambidexterity in later-generation family businesses

Hiebl, Martin R. W.
Management Decision , Volume 53 (5): 22 – Jun 15, 2015
Download PDF
22 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/emerald-publishing/family-involvement-and-organizational-ambidexterity-in-later-2DbFdZSB3y
Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © Emerald Group Publishing Limited
ISSN
0025-1747
DOI
10.1108/MD-04-2014-0191
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Purpose– How family businesses (FBs) manage to survive in the long term is still not well understood in FB research. A promising concept to explain survivability, that is currently heavily discussed in the management literature is organizational ambidexterity (OA) – the ability to balance exploring and exploiting activities at the same time. However, FB research has not yet taken sufficient advantage of the potential of OA to contribute to explaining the ability of later-generation FBs to survive. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach– Using central tenets of agency theory, this conceptual paper draws together findings from the FB literature and the OA literature to create a framework for the relationship between family involvement and the ability to reach high levels of OA. Findings– Seven propositions are developed which suggest that the level of family involvement in ownership and management affect the ability of later-generation FBs to reach high levels of OA. They further suggest that the number of family shareholders, the existence of majority family shareholders, and generational involvement of the controlling family in management moderate these relationships. Originality/value– This is the first paper to theoretically analyze OA in later-generation FBs. The seven propositions and avenues for further research presented in this paper are intended to motivate FB research to take a closer look at OA. This may be crucial to better explaining and predicting one of business-owning families’ most important goals: the long-term survival of the FB.

Journal

Management Decision – Emerald Publishing

Published: Jun 15, 2015

There are no references for this article.