| 1. |
- Criaco, Giuseppe
(författare)
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Founding conditions and the survival of new firms : An imprinting perspective on founders, organizational members and external environments
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- New firms are important sources of new employment, economic growth and innovation. Yet, a large portion of them do not manage to survive their first years of existence. This is often linked to their initial lack of capabilities, resources, routines and legitimacy. Certain favorable conditions at founding may allow new firms to partially overcome these initial shortcomings, and help them survive. For instance, organizational members’ prior experience may provide knowledge and skills to the new firm. However, it may also act as a constraint. It can lead new firms to follow a prescribed way of doing things which may ultimately threaten their survival. Similarly, certain unfavorable conditions of the external environment at founding may paradoxically offer a fertile ground for new firms to nurture their survival. Thus, whether some founding conditions are good or bad for new firms is still an unanswered question.Building on imprinting theory, this dissertation investigates how different founding conditions affect the survival of new firms. At the organizational level, I study founders’ prior working experience in an incumbent family firm, organizational members’ prior shared international experience and prior industry experience, and focus respectively on three types of new firms: entrepreneurial spawns, international new ventures and high/mid-high tech new firms. I use a matched employer-employee dataset to test the effect of different types of prior experience on new firm survival. At the environment level, I propose how population density of similar organizational forms and the mortality of generalist organizations at founding may affect the survival of new family firms.
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| 2. |
- Helin, Jenny, 1972-
(författare)
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Living moments in family meetings : A process study in the family business context
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation studies meetings from a process perspective. Such an approach, which can be labelled ‘process organisation studies’ is promising in that it directs attention to social processes continuously in the making. The thesis builds on the current development in process organisation studies in two ways. The first centres on an elaboration on key assumptions of approaching organisational life from a process perspective. I here bridge process organisation studies with Bakhtin’s work on dialogue into a dialogical becoming perspective. This perspective calls for a distinct way of understanding processes of becoming which makes it possible to explore meeting practices as situated, emerging and relational world-making activities. The second is a comprehensive processual account based on a collaborative field study with two owner families. Organised meetings held in a family that owns a business (or several) has proved to be of importance for family business longevity in that the family members can help to develop strong family relations and a healthy business. In this setting, where people are dealing with that which is often most important to them in life, such as their identity, work, family relationships and future wealth, a process approach is useful since it helps to understand the emotionally loaded, complex and intertwined issues at stake.What emerges as central in understanding movement and flow is the need to understand the here and now moments in meetings. I refer to these moments as ‘living moments’ as a reminder of the once-occurring, unique and momentary transformation that can take place between people in such encounters. Thus, the living moment is the moment of movement.
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| 3. |
- Mari, Isabelle
(författare)
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Developing trust among family owners in multiple branches family firms
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation studies trust in Multiple Branches Family Firms. It focuses on a form of trust that has received little attention: collective trust (Kramer 2010). Drawing on self-categorization theory (Tajfel and Turner 1986; 1987), the relational models of procedural justice (Blader and Tyler 2015), and the Economies of Worth (Boltanski and Thévenot 1986, 1991), this dissertation provides a framework for understanding how collective trust evolves when groups branch out. It sheds light on the role of the leader(s) in this process. This study investigates how changes in identity perception – due to changes in group’s structure – can erode collective trust, and the procedures the leader(s) can create to maintain identification with the group, as well as collective trust. Empirically, the study is based on in-depth and interpretive case studies of collective trust erosion and maintenance in four family firms. The evolution of the relationships between family members in the family and business contexts is apprehended through in-depth interviews. When the family branches out, family leaders tend to develop formalities to maintain collective trust. These formalities aim to reduce family members’ perception of vulnerability, and address the changes in identity that family members experience over time. As the family evolves, family members develop varying identifications, moving from Family to Branch identification. Over the years, Family identification tends to decline leading to Family collective trust erosion. Family leaders can create procedures to maintain superordinate group (SOG) identification, and collective trust. Three forms of identification emerged: The Family SOG, The Professionalized Family SOG, and The Family Owners SOG.This study offers a new perspective on trust erosion and maintenance with a consideration for the group level as a source and object of trust. Two distinct forms of trust erosion emerged: one deriving from a perception of leaders’ unfair treatment towards group members, and the other one from gradual changes in group members’ identity perception of one another. In these processes of trust erosion, I identified two triggers: the denunciation of the familial nature of the family leaders’ procedures in business situations, and the denunciation of family leaders’ illegitimate ways of qualifying family members. They result from family members’ changes in identification when the family branches out. Family leaders can avoid that trust erodes through the generation of new salient superordinate group identifications that address family members’ changes in identity perception.
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| 4. |
- Nazir, Imran
(författare)
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Nurturing entrepreneurial venturing capabilities : A study of family firms
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this dissertation is to improve our understanding of how family firms adapt to their dynamic environments through creating new businesses and to explore the role of dynamic capabilities driving firm’s strategic entrepreneurial activities. I address the above aims by conducting qualitative case studies of Hum Network and AVT channels, which are both family firms at the time of their entry into the deregulated TV industry of Pakistan in 2005. A deregulated environment is often characterized as highly dynamic owing to the rapid and frequent changes that occur in customer groups and product offerings and the mix of competitors. Reduced barriers to entry through government legislation often produce a massive shift in the structure of competition, as it attracts new entrants to the industry, intensifying the hostility of the business environment. The success and long-term survival in this increasingly dynamic environment often rests on building dynamic capabilities that transform firm resources and competences and revitalize existing firm businesses. However, we still lack detailed insights into how family firms build dynamic capabilities to facilitate the implementation of entrepreneurial initiatives, which focus on the creation of new corporate businesses.In the literature of family entrepreneurship, the dominant view holds that family objectives concerned with ensuring longevity made family firms low risktakers and conservative in their strategies and they are thus less likely to engage in venturing initiatives. Some scholars point to potential insufficiencies when family firms use their resources: they argue that family owner-managers often draw from a family pool rather than a wider market for talent which can stifle the development of capabilities needed to engage in entrepreneurial initiatives. Contrary to this view, one of the key insights that emerge from this study is that to cope with changes in the competitive environment, family firms adopt new business venturing as a strategic approach to establish and protect their position in a competitive industry. By a strategic approach, I mean the intent of family founding executives to seek strategic adaptation, particularly through continuously identifying unmet customer needs in the industry and exploiting these needs through producing new media products and services well in advance of their competitors. To enact or implement their strategic imperative, both firms develope a set of capabilities, which I call entrepreneurial venturing capabilities (EVC).First, opportunity refinement capability refers to the ability to envision new possibilities in the market combined with the ability to evaluate and modify the opportunity according to new insights to shape the venture opportunity in ways that more effectively address the unmet customer or market needs. It reflects management’s abilities in imaging new venture opportunities based on the industry experience and to further refine these opportunities by deliberately composing teams at the top management level with additional industry experience to collectively form judgements on the attractiveness of new opportunities.Second, resource mobilization capability consists of an ability to develop and integrate the internal and external resources needed to develop new media offering for the new ventures. It reflects management’s ability in building enduring and trust-based relationships with actors inside the organization to accumulate and integrate resources as well as ability to form external collaborative relationships necessary to ensure the continuous development of new innovative products.Third, customer orientation capability is the ability to develop and maintain close relationships with customers to ensure long-term success of the new venture in the competitive environment. Customer orientation reflects management’s ability in accumulating relational resources such as reputation, image, trust and credibility through promoting behaviors, this puts an emphasize on understanding and aligning with the customer’s cultural values proactively to collect and use customer information to adopt to their current and future needs as well as collaborating with the customers regularly.Overall, the capabilities that I identify enable family firms to sense and calibrate the opportunities in the fast-changing deregulated environment, to rapidly mobilize resources for new product development to seize the opportunities, and to quickly transform their product and services by disseminating customer knowledge throughout the organization to meet the shifting demands of customers and gain market dominance.
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| 5. |
- Bäckvall, Lisa, 1980-
(författare)
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The coexistence of family, ownership, and business : Conceptualizing entanglement and business family ownering
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This research engages with the topic of business family ownership through an ethnographically inspired study of business governance-related activities constructed as family members’ business-owning practices relationally and over time. In short, it is about what business families do when owning businesses and how this form of owning can be conceptualized.Corporate governance dominates understandings of ownership and business where ownership is constructed in a particular manner (individualistic, passive, and public) (e.g. La Porta et al., 1999; Robé, 2011). This is also (e.g. Breton-Miller & Miller, 2009; Le Breton-Miller et al., 2011), the theory in use in the family business research field in terms of governance research (e.g. Aguilera & Crespi-Cladera, 2012). Governing in family businesses has also been conceptualized as overlapping spheres of family, ownership, and business/management (Gersick et al., 1997). This study embraces the coexistence of family, ownership, and business/management as entanglement, which is lacking in corporate governance research in general and in family business studies in particular. By extending alternative framings on ownership and family governance (e.g., Brundin et al., 2010; Nordqvist 2016) via firstly an interpretative paradigm and secondly the practice turn, this phenomenon, business family ownership, is thirdly constructed through one of many possible practice theories – social praxeology (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). This theory contributes to create conditions for a renewed understanding of owning as doing within a family business, relationally and over time. Social praxeology not only directs attention to relationality but also to individual and collective embodiment, where the central concepts are capital, field, habitus, and practical sense. Bourdieu’s social praxeology acknowledges a relational ontology and epistemology in his particular version of structuralism interpretivism. In this study it implies that the first and second order structuers are contructed via a reflective field reading.Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to explore and construct the coexistence of family, ownership, and business/management through a social praxeology reading and conceptualizing the business family ownership, as done together and over time.An ethnographically inspired study (through interviews, shadowing, and participation in corporate events) of business- and governance-related activities (such as company board meetings, top management meetings, and product development meetings) generates an understanding of the entanglement of family, ownership, and business/management during an ongoing change of CEO in a family business. Drawing upon a structural reading in line with Bourdieu’s social praxeology (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), four broad business family ownership practices are constructed: the practice of choosing the next CEO, the practice of calculating, the practice of tasting, and the practice of joking. The first empirical chapter is a reading of capital forms and their structure and distribution within the business family (structures of the first order). In this chapter, the construct of family, along with Bourdieu’s assumptions, is introduced. The second empirical chapter is a reading of both first- and second-order structures, where the family habitus concept is combined with the business dimension in the change of CEO. The third empirical chapter is dominated by the reading of the second-order structures, where the practices of counting, tasting, and joking are constructed as business family owning. These business family ownership practices form an understanding of the entangled nature of a particular family business.This study contributes to generating conditions for understanding business family ownership as private, collective, and transgenerational in contrast to the well-entrenched corporate governance view characterized above. Hence it challenges the dominant views of ownership as property rights that emphasize separateness incorporated in the Gersick et al. (1997) model by instead conceptualizing the coexistence of family, ownership, and management/business as entanglement. Towards a distinction through the conceptualization of entanglement, the family and ownership categories are primarily constructed as a collective subjective corpus operating as structuring structures within a business family field. Business family ownering is a way of governing where the body and its sense reproduce and refine the structures in a family business, forming a specific cultural business family capital. Accordingly, with family habitus, owning turns into ownering. Structuring structure with the particularities of an owner family, relationally inhabited by dominated and dominating agents, forms a business family ownership as ownering, characterized by inertia and relationality.
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| 6. |
- Parada Balderrama, Maria José
(författare)
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Developing governance structures in family firms : From adoption to institutionalization
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation deals with family business governance. More specifically it focuses on why and how family businesses develop their governance structures.This is an important topic because governance plays an essential role in the business world, as it links ownership and management and defines its relationships. In the case of family businesses it is especially important because the boundaries of ownership and management are blurred by the overlapping of the two systems of family and business. This overlap makes the creation of governance structures challenging and elusive. Approaching the creation of governance structures as a process of development and understanding the reasons behind the pattern of adoption becomes a key element for family businesses.Drawing on institutional theory, I suggest that legitimacy and efficiency seeking, two seemingly opposing reasons, motivate the development of governance structures over time. I also rely on institutional work and bring back individuals to institutional theory by showing how family members act as institutional champions and lead governance changes within their organizations while interacting with other interested actors involved.Combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies, I study the development of governance structures in a processual way. On the one hand, using Mokken scale analysis, I test a sample of 1,596 cases for whether family businesses follow a specific sequence in the development of governance structures. Subsequently, I use Poisson regression analysis to test eleven hypotheses related to efficiency and legitimacy seeking and the degree ofdevelopment of such structure. On the other hand, qualitative case-based research is used to shed light on how governance structures change over time. The purposeful efforts of individuals are observed in the qualitative cases. Empirical findings suggest that, in the broad picture, family businesses follow a specific sequence that goes from business governance to family governance. When observing in detail with a process perspective individual cases show that family businesses follow different patterns of development due to four different motives. Legitimacy seeking has a strong influence in the decision to adopt governance structures, but if not aligned with efficiency seeking, this adoption may be ceremonial, meaning that despite not being really implemented and internalized they still allow these structures to exist. Efficiency seeking triggers substantive adoption and full institutionalization of such structures. In my research two other major reasons for the development of governance structurese merge: power and learning. Both can act in a positive way (power seeking or accumulated know-how) or in a negative way (resistance to give up power or lack of know-how). This appears as institutional work which takes place where different actors get involved with possible institutional champions guiding the process.
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| 7. |
- Tidasen, Christine, 1971-
(författare)
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Att ta över pappas bolag : En studie av affärsförbindelser som triadtransformationer under generationsskiften i familjeföretag
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The family firm sector is volatile due to for example challenges associated with management and ownership succession. Family businesses in Sweden, as well as globally, make an important part of the economy. It is well known that successions are critical transition processes for these firms. While this problem has been approached mainly as an internal managerial or financial challenge, this dissertation discusses the social dimensions of how successors transform family firms and especially personal networks during successions. Triads are used to create understanding for succession processes; the successor and the C.E.O. always contribute to triads. The third (wo)man is another family member, a co-worker, or an external actor, frequently a customer. To make sense out of the triad, one must understand the individuals and their relations. Particularly the relation between the C.E.O. and the successor is being analyzed. Further internal and external relations and how they are being transferred and transformed in a triadic context during successions provide a context for the triads and are considered as well. Accounts from four Swedish manufacturing family firms and their business partners show that the C.E.O.’s personal network infiltrates the environment, both internally and externally, and that the successor must earn trustworthiness to be able to transform the companies and the C.E.O.’s network. The trustworthiness seems to be easier to create on an external arena where the C.E.O. is not present. On that arena the successors can build their own platforms from where they can conquer other relations. It appears that the successor first has to show capability of creating their own external business relations before they can transform the existing internal and external network. Successors should also focus on working, for the family business, in new projects that contribute a new competence to the firm. When a family business is transformed identity development is crucial. The “child” must change its identity from being the next generation to be an obvious C.E.O. on own merits. Keywords: family business, succession, trust, relation, triad, network, identity
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| 8. |
- Gabrielsson, Åke, 1942-, et al.
(författare)
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Individ och agentskap i strategiska processer : En syntetisk och handlingslogisk ansats
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Even if strategy research often assumes that strategies are the result of intentional and purposeful behaviour the individual and human agency have tended to be neglected. Few empirical studies focus on how the individuals, their conceptions and actions interact with strategy formation. Based on ideas from process research and critical realism we made a review of the research and we maintain that the bulk of the research is based on simplified assumptions. We therefore propose a supplementary socio-cognitive approach based on more realistic assumptions, a synthesis and action logic approach, emphasising the individuals, the leading team and their embeddedness. In a process study with a comparative case study design we followed, in real time for about a decade, strategy formation processes in intermediate organisation in local economic development. Various methods of data collection and analysis were combined. By laying bare some of the mechanisms that explain the outcome in four processes we demonstrate the use of the proposed approach. A theoretical construction, the agent´s strategic concepts of action (SCA), aims at capturing the conceptions as an expression of the individual frame of reference providing reasons for action. The SCA carries explanatory power and is significant for both the process and content of the strategies. A typology of the SCAs is developed. The composition, the interaction and the structure of the team are other central aspects. We conclude that a strong group well suited to lead a formation process include a proactive strategist with a strategic idea and social capability; the role constellation is differentiated, and supplementary and other strategic actors relate to the strategy and the contextual roots in a way that will support the strategy. We also demonstrate in which circumstances some cognitive, social and political mechanisms discussed in earlier research are activated.
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| 9. |
- Salzer, Miriam
(författare)
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Identity Across Borders : A Study in the "IKEA-World"
- 1994
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- How do people construct shared views of what the organization is all about in the international, complex; company? Within a cultural perspective, organizational identity can be tmderstood as organizational members' shared views and definitions of the organization. As people make sense of actions, events, decisions, etc., shared meanings develop which provide organizational members with a sense of organization. Through an ethnographic study in the corporate setting of lKEA I have tried to create an understanding of the processes tluough which organizational identities become constructed across borders.In the study it is shown how organizational members through the processes of sense-making construct collective self-views. By drawing borders against the outside world, mirroring themselves and talking to the self, organizational members come to create definitions of what the organization is all about. In the international, complex organization, these processes take place in different national contexts and in various local spheres of meaning. In order to offset divergent views and differentiation of meanings, managers try to create a global supra-identity through the fabrication of culture. At the same time, however, there is a heterogenization of meanings as predefined meanings from the top are constantly interpreted, rejected, recreated or adopted in the local spheres. Thus, in the complex organization, there are many collective selfviews and multiple identities. The organization, then, is to be Wlderstood as an arbitrary boundary around a set of spheres of meaning that overlap and interact.Index
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