key: cord-0046319-ter6qyeh
authors: Pieper, Torsten M.
title: Editor’s note: “family business scholars, lead the charge!”
date: 2020-06-24
journal: nan
DOI: 10.1016/j.jfbs.2020.100362
sha: 8de144ea65d1c5b53deacd4e8a0b80a293623e63
doc_id: 46319
cord_uid: ter6qyeh

nan

In response to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, all academic conferences initially scheduled for the remainder of the year have either been postponed or converted to an online format. Our strategic alliance partner, The International Family Enterprise Research Academy (IFERA), continues to offer virtual workshops and seminars around all aspects of research and publication. Please visit their website (https://ifera.org) for further details and upcoming events.

The Family Business SMS Extension Conference in association with this year's virtual Strategic Management Society Annual Conference (October 26-30, 2020, https://www.strategicmanagement.net/virtual/ overview/overview) will also follow a virtual format. The theme of this year's Extension Conference, "Balancing Continuity and Radical Change in Family Business", lends itself particularly well to discuss strategies for dealing with disruption and uncertainty in pandemic times, and shall provide an ideal venue to discuss and develop topical and future research avenues at the intersection of strategic management and family business. Please visit the extension website for regular updates and speaker bios (https://www.strategicmanagement.net/london/ extensions/loughborough).

The present issue features a selection of distinct scholars and research topics. Contributors to this issue come from Italy (Elisa Conz, Alfredo De Massis), Germany (Bennet Schierstedt, Marisa Henn, and Eva Lutz), France (Andrea Calabrò), Monaco (Mariateresa Torchia), Spain (Patricia Gabaldon), Turkey (Sadi Kanadlı), Sweden (Daniel Pittino and Massimo Baù), Australia (Peter William Lamb and Francesco Chirico), the United States (Laura Madden, Amy McMillan, and Oneil Harris), and Mexico (Marcia Villasana, Elvira Naranjo-Priego, and Elda Barron).

All five research articles in this issue share a common thread in that they look at heterogeneity among family businesses (Memili & Dibrell, 2019; Nordqvist, Sharma, & Chirico, 2014) in one way or another. Conz, Lamb, and De Massis investigate variations in the practice of resilience among family businesses. Madden, McMillan, and Harris study differences in family firm's motivations to engage in CSR. Schierstedt, Henn, and Lutz trace variability in diversified acquisitions to distinct configurations of family ownership, family management, and generational stage. Kanadlı, Torchia, Gabaldon, and Calabrò discover that task conflict among board members is only beneficial for board control and advisory performance in an atmosphere of openness. Finally, Pittino, Chirico, Baù, Villasana, Naranjo-Priego, and Barron highlight household structure as an important factor driving the intention to start a family business. Each article is discussed in more detail in the following sections.

In Italy), Peter William Lamb (Peter Lamb and Associates, Australia), and Alfredo De Massis (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy) study resilience, a hugely important topic in family business research and practice (e.g., Amann & Jaussaud, 2012; Chrisman, Chua, & Steier, 2011; Hanson, Hessel, & Danes, 2019) , and particularly in the current environment. Unlike prior studies, the authors focus their attention on the role that owners and managers play in this process and suggest that variations in the practice of resilience are determined by the owners'/ managers' understanding of resilience which then leads to specific actions. By applying phenomenography, an interpretive methodology, to a set of long-lived family wineries from Australia and Italy, the authors identify four distinct ways in which owners/managers of family wineries understand resilience: Proactive development, predictive control, adaptive consolidation, and stable perpetuation. Each understanding is associated with unique ways in which resilience is practiced. The insights from this study highlight the value of inductive approaches to understand intricate processes in family business and stress that resilience (like many organizational strategies) is a practice that owners/ managers do, rather than an attribute that organizations possess, and thus might be as another possible source for the heterogeneity of family businesses. The second article, by Laura Madden, Amy McMillan, and Oneil Harris, all from East Carolina University (USA), investigates Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (e.g., Block & Wagner, 2014; Campopiano & De Massis, 2015; Dawson, Ginesti, & Sciascia, 2019) , and in particular, the antecedents to invest into CSR. Drawing on socioemotional selectivity theory, which explains how individuals at different ages differ in their expectations of the relationships they maintain, the authors argue that a firm's selectivity differs with its ownership structure and that it changes over time, which affects the firm's relationships with stakeholder and thus its engagement in CSR. Drawing on a sample of 1436 family and non-family firms over an eight-year period, the authors find that family firms are more likely to invest in CSR activities than non-family firms; but as they age, family firms become more selective and invest less heavily in CSR activities. The findings contribute to a clearer understanding of the differences in family firms' motivations to engage in CSR and thus help explain some of the inconsistent findings of prior studies. By identifying selectivity driven by age and ownership as an important determinant of distinct family firm behavior, the study advances the understanding of heterogeneity of family firms and provides impetus for future studies on the topic.

The third article, by Bennet Schierstedt, Marisa Henn, and Eva Lutz, all from Heinrich Heine University in Germany, offers a fresh look at diversification through acquisitions in family firms (Gomez-Mejia, Patel, & Zellweger, 2018; Hussinger & Issah, 2019; Miller, Le Breton-Miller, & Lester, 2010) . The authors seek to reconcile the conflicting results from previous studies showing that family firms are either more or less likely to engage in diversified acquisitions. Furthering the heterogeneity investigation, the authors argue that distinct configurations of family ownership, family management, and generational stage affect the likelihood of diversified acquisitions. An analysis of 211 German family firms between 2010 and 2016 involving 404 strategic acquisitions shows that high family ownership is linked to a long-term perspective, reflecting extended socioemotional wealth preferences (Miller & Le Breton-Miller, 2014) , and is associated with a higher probability of diversified acquisitions. This effect is found to be particularly strong in first-generation family firms and weaker under high family management. In later generation family firms, family-dominated top management teams decrease the probability of diversified acquisitions, potentially reflecting a greater preference for more short-term oriented restricted socioemotional wealth. Thus, family firms are both more and less likely to engage in diversified acquisitions, depending on various configurations of family ownership, family management, and generational stage. Fellow scholars shall find the insights in this article of great value to their future research efforts involving diversification and acquisition strategies of family firms.

In the fourth article, Sadi Boĝaç Kanadlı (Ministry of Trade, Republic of Turkey), Mariateresa Torchia (International University of Monaco, Monaco), Patricia Gabaldon (IE Business School, Spain), and Andrea Calabrò (IPAG Business School, France) shed new light on the role of boards of directors in family firms (e.g., Bammens, Voordeckers, & Van Gils, 2011; Bettinelli, 2011; Vandebeek, Voordeckers, Lambrechts, & Huybrechts, 2016) , in particular whether and how the level of task conflict among board members impacts the board's control and advisory performance, and the extent to which these relationships vary with different degrees of board openness (i.e., how openly and willingly board members communicate, share ideas and challenge one another). The authors test their hypotheses on a sample of 94 family firms from Norway and, contrary to the general understanding, find that task conflict alone does not lead to improved advisory or control task performance. Interestingly, the benefits of task conflict seem to only bear fruit in the presence of openness among board members. This finding has theoretical implications for research on boards of directors, but also on teams and corporate governance in general, as it stresses the need to consider moderators and mediators to better understand the causal mechanisms that drive decision processes. On a practical level, the findings emphasize the relevance of trust and cohesion (which openness can be seen as a reflection of) in fostering productive group processes.

The fifth and final article in this issue, by Daniel Pittino (Jönköping International Business School, Sweden), Francesco Chirico (Macquarie University, Australia), Massimo Baù (Jönköping International Business School, Sweden), Marcia Villasana (Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico), Elvira Naranjo-Priego (Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico), and Elda Barron (Universidad de Monterrey, Mexico), investigates the determinants of an individual's intention to start a new venture involving family members. Unlike prior studies that have investigated entrepreneurial career intentions in developed countries (e.g., Carr & Sequeira, 2007; Rodriguez, Tuggle, & Hackett, 2009; Schröder, Schmitt-Rodermund, & Arnaud, 2011) , the authors chose Mexico as the setting for their research and thereby contribute valuable insights to the burgeoning research on entrepreneurship in developing nations. Drawing on the family embeddedness perspective (Aldrich & Cliff, 2003) and using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) on Mexico, the authors find an inverted U-shaped relationship between the number of individuals in a family household and the intention to start a family business. Further, the relationship is moderated by household income and the individual's education level. The findings contribute yet another important insight to the research on family business heterogeneity in that they highlight household structure as a significant factor affecting the intention to start a family business, thereby offering additional impetus for future studies investigating the many differences that exist among family businesses around the world.

We are delighted to announce several exciting Special Issues that are currently ongoing at JFBS. We are extremely proud and grateful that we were able to attract such an outstanding group of guest editors to lead these Special Issues and anticipate we will receive many highquality submissions.

First, the Special Issue on "Advancing Diversity Research in Family Business" has been attracting a lot of interest and is accepting submissions until December 1, 2020. Interested authors are encouraged to submit queries to any of the guest editors: Mariasole Bannò (University of Brescia, Italy), Giorgia D'Allura (University of Catania, Italy), Alexandra Dawson Third, the Special Issue on "Family Business in Latin America" guest edited by Pedro Vázquez (IAE Business School & FCE Universidad Austral, Argentina), Isabel Botero (University of Louisville, USA), Unai Arzubiaga (Universidad del País Vasco, Spain), and Esra Memili (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA), accepts submissions until February 28, 2021. The guest editors continue to offer online paper development and feedback sessions in collaboration with the LATAM Chapter of IFERA (https://ifera.org). Interested authors should contact the managing guest editor, Pedro Vázquez, with any questions or queries.

Detailed calls for papers for these as well as any upcoming special issues can be found on the journal website (https://www.journals. elsevier.com/journal-of-family-business-strategy/call-for-papers).

If you are interested in editing a special issue for JFBS, we would be delighted to hear your thoughts.

Thank you for your interest in and your support of JFBS. We encourage you to contribute to the increasing growth of family business and JFBS by sending us your work. We look forward to receiving your submissions. Most importantly, please stay well!

The pervasive effects of family on entrepreneurship: Toward a family embeddedness perspective

Family and non-family business resilience in an economic downturn

Boards of directors in family businesses: A literature review and research agenda

Boards of directors in family firms: An exploratory study of structure and group process

The effect of family ownership on different dimensions of corporate social responsibility: Evidence from large US firms

Corporate social responsibility reporting: A content analysis in family and non-family firms

Prior family business exposure as intergenerational influence and entrepreneurial intent: A theory of planned behavior approach

Resilience of family firms: An introduction

Family-related antecedents of business legality: An empirical investigation among Italian family owned SMEs

In the horns of the dilemma: Socioemotional wealth, financial wealth, and acquisitions in family firms

Relational processes in family entrepreneurial culture and resilience across generations

Firm acquisitions by family firms: A mixed gamble approach

The economics of COVID-19: initial empirical evidence on how family firms in five European countries cope with the corona crisis

The Palgrave Handbook of Heterogeneity among Family Firms

Deconstructing socioemotional wealth

Family ownership and acquisition behavior in publicly-traded companies

Family firm heterogeneity and governance: A configuration approach

An exploratory study of how potential "family and household capital" impacts new venture start-up rates

Career choice intentions of adolescents with a family business background

Board role performance and faultlines in family firms: The moderating role of formal board evaluation