Institutional influences on entrepreneurial behaviours in the family entrepreneurship context: towards an integrative framework

Abstract

Institutional influences on entrepreneurial behaviours in the family entrepreneurship context: towards an integrative framework This third special issue of the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research is dedicated to examining institutional influences on the entrepreneurial behaviours of business families, family businesses, and family business groups.As the study of family entrepreneurship continues to expand and focus moves towards understanding heterogeneity among family firms, understanding the institutional context in which family firms exist -as well as the variation in entrepreneurial behaviours, families, firms and business groupsbecomes increasingly important.This special issue builds on the first two special issues in this journal by showcasing these relevant issues.The first special issue (Volume 10, Issue 1/2) initiates the discussion in this journal.Poutziouris et al. (2004), in their introductory commentary, underscore the contradictory forces associated with entrepreneurship in the family business: the survival rate is deteriorating despite such organisations possessing unique resources (e.g., familiness, family social capital).The inaugural special issue includes papers that contribute to knowledge at the interface of family and entrepreneurship, addressing questions related to the interaction between aspirations and business behaviours and outcomes, entrepreneurial processes alongside issues of family firm governance, as well as (entrepreneurial) strategy formation and (family) governance mechanisms.The second special issue (Volume 16, Issue 5) focusses on risk and family entrepreneurship.In their guest editorial, Seaman et al. (2010) note that the variety of family business in economies around the world is rich and that further exploration of the similarities and differences of the contexts in which these family firms operate is needed to further knowledge of how family businesses and business families entrepreneurially engage across a variety of contexts.Specifically, much remains to be understood about how economic systems, legal systems and culture (i.e., institutional context) influence entrepreneurial behaviours of business families, family businesses and family business groups.To this end, this special issue focusses on examining how institutional forces affect the entrepreneurial behaviours of business families, family businesses and groups of family businesses.The field of family entrepreneurship[1] is a relatively nascent area of study relative to the expanded understanding of the causes and consequences of entrepreneurial behaviours (Bettinelli et al., 2014).In their work on family entrepreneurship, Bettinelli et al. (2014) demonstrate theoretically that at least three loci of entrepreneurial behaviours exist in the family entrepreneurship contextindividuals, families and family businessesand that these three loci exert reciprocal influences.Indeed, an individual's perceptions and subsequent actions are strongly influenced by patterns learned during childhood from their parents and members of their family of origin.Further, families, as constructed social units (i.e.family of origin, family of choice, blended families, etc.), influence their members and are influenced by their members.Finally, the family firm influences the family (e.g. the "enterpriseness" of the firm; see Frank et al., 2019) as well as individuals comprising it (e.g.successor development or new member socialisation).Expanding the scope of research dedicated to outcomes of entrepreneurial behaviours beyond the realm of financial performance, research related to family entrepreneurship seeks to understand the emergence and influences of entrepreneurial behaviours on outcomes such as firm start-up, growth, diversification, CSR and sustainable development, philanthropy, and beyond (Bergamaschi and Randerson, 2016;Randerson et al., 2016).

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 38 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.