Martin Hiebl,
"Family Involvement and Organizational Ambidexterity in Later-generation Family Businesses: A Framework for Further Investigation"
, in Management Decision, Vol. 53, Nummer 5, Seite(n) 1061-1082, 2015, ISSN: 0025-1747
Original Titel:
Family Involvement and Organizational Ambidexterity in Later-generation Family Businesses: A Framework for Further Investigation
Sprache des Titels:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
Purpose: How family businesses manage to survive in the long term is still not well understood in family business research. A promising concept to explain survivability that is currently heavily discussed in the management literature is organizational ambidexterity ? the ability to balance exploring and exploiting activities at the same time. However, family business research has not yet taken sufficient advantage of the potential of organizational ambidexterity to contribute to explaining the ability of later-generation family businesses to survive.
Design/methodology/approach: Using central tenets of agency theory, this conceptual paper draws together findings from the family business literature and the organizational ambidexterity literature to create a framework for the relationship between family involvement and the ability to reach high levels of organizational ambidexterity.
Findings: Seven propositions are developed which suggest that the level of family involvement in ownership and management affect the ability of later-generation family businesses to reach high levels of organizational ambidexterity. 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 organizational ambidexterity in later-generation family businesses. The seven propositions and avenues for further research presented in this paper are intended to motivate family business research to take a closer look at organizational ambidexterity. This may be crucial to better explaining and predicting one of business-owning families? most important goals: the long-term survival of the family business.
Keywords: Family business, Family firm, Organizational ambidexterity, Business survival, Family involvement