What Makes a Family Firm Innovative? CEO Risk-Taking Propensity and the Organizational Context of Family Firms

Kraiczy, Nils Daniel; Hack, Andreas; Kellermanns, Franz W. (2015). What Makes a Family Firm Innovative? CEO Risk-Taking Propensity and the Organizational Context of Family Firms. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 32(3), pp. 334-348. Wiley 10.1111/jpim.12203

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Investigating the new product portfolio innovativeness of family firms connects two important topics that have recently received considerable attention in innovation and family firm research. First, new product portfolio innovativeness has been identified as a critical determinant of firm performance. Second, research on family firms has focused on the questions of if and why family firms are more or less innovative than other organizational forms. Research investigating the innovativeness of family firms has often applied a risk-oriented perspective by identifying socioemotional wealth (SEW) as the main reference that determines firm behavior. Thus, prior research has mainly focused on the organizational context to predict innovation-related family firm behavior and neglected the impact of preferences and the behavior of the chief executive officer (CEO), which have both been shown to affect firm outcomes. Hence, this study aims to extend the previous research by introducing the CEO's disposition to organizational context variables to explain the new product portfolio innovativeness of small and medium-sized family firms. Specifically, this study explores how the organizational context (i.e., ownership by top management team [TMT] family members and generation in charge of the family firm) of family firms interacts with CEO risk-taking propensity to affect new product portfolio innovativeness. Using a sample of 114 German CEOs of small and medium-sized family firms operating in manufacturing industries, the results show that CEO risk-taking propensity has a positive effect on new product portfolio innovativeness. Moreover, the analyses show that the organizational context of family firms impacts the relationship between CEO risk-taking propensity and new product portfolio innovativeness. Specifically, the relationship between CEO risk-taking propensity and new product portfolio innovativeness is weaker if levels of ownership by TMT family members are high (high SEW). Additionally, the effect of CEO risk-taking propensity on new product portfolio innovativeness is stronger in family firms at earlier generational stages (high SEW). This result suggests that if SEW is a strong reference, family firm-specific characteristics can affect individual dispositions and, in turn, the behaviors of executives. Therefore, this study helps extend the knowledge on the determinants of new product portfolio innovativeness of family firms by considering an individual CEO preference and the organizational context variables of family firms simultaneously.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Department of Business Management > Institute of Organization and Human Resource Management > Human Resource Management

UniBE Contributor:

Kraiczy, Nils Daniel, Hack, Andreas

Subjects:

600 Technology > 650 Management & public relations
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 330 Economics

ISSN:

1540-5885

Publisher:

Wiley

Language:

English

Submitter:

Nils Daniel Kraiczy

Date Deposited:

26 May 2015 08:29

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 14:36

Publisher DOI:

10.1111/jpim.12203

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.58343

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/58343

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