18th EIASM Workshop on Family Firm Management Research

Naples (Italy) – October 2-3, 2023

Family Firms Between Local and Global Challenges

Chairs

Alessandro Cirillo¹², Donata Mussolino¹, and Salvatore Sciascia³²
Massimo Baù² and Kajsa Haag²

¹ University of Naples, Federico II, Italy
² CeFEO, Jönköping International Business School, Sweden
³ FABULA, Università Cattaneo, LIUC, Italy

Keynote Speakers

Anneleen Michiels
Hasselt University, Belgium

Joe Astrachan
Kennesaw State University, USA

Mattias Nordqvist
Jönköping International Business School & Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden

Co-organizer

Department of Economics, Management, Institutions
University of Naples, Federico II, Italy

Call for papers

Emotions pervade family firms influencing their strategic orientation and decisions. Since the introduction of the Sociomotional Wealth (SEW) concept by Gomez-Mejia and colleagues (2007), the rationale for framing family firms’ distinctive behaviour has been rooted in the preference for non-financial goals over financial ones. Family firms may pose SEW preservation as a priority retroceding financial wealth as a secondary end. However, scholars claim the need of balancing financial and non-financial wealth, i.e. the need for a co-existence of different types of goals, not the supremacy of one type of objective over the other one (Kotlar & De Massis, 2013). This conceptual effort flourished around the logic of the mixed-gamble approach (Gomez–Mejia et al., 2014): some contingency factors might invoke the primacy of financial goals over non-financial ones when, for example, family control or family survivability are jeopardized. This mixed-gamble perspective found fertile ground in multiple research areas such as internationalization (Alessandri et al., 2018), M&A (Faud et al., 2021; Hussinger & Issah, 2019), performance (Chirico & Kellermans, 2022), initial public offering (Kotlar et al., 2018) and growth (Bauweraerts et al., 2021). Despite such an effort, the literature still lacks to deepen the question of the factors that drive the balance between financial and non-financial goals within the firm and the family and how the balance is planned and reached among family and non-family shareholders.

Therefore, in the 18th EIASM Family Firm Research workshop, we invite you to engage with “Balancing financial and non-financial wealth”. We welcome contributions that deal with the following issues (among others):

the influence of family heterogeneity in balancing strategy;
the role of time and family generation in the selection of financial and non-financial goals that might co-exist;
the potentially detrimental effect of not balancing financial and non-financial wealth;
the definition of non-financial wealth beyond emotional-related capital;
the role of non-family stakeholders in shaping the balance between financial and non-financial wealth;
the disclosure and accountability of family and business goals;
the role of formal and informal governance mechanisms in defining and supporting the balance of different
types of wealth.

While submission of papers related to the central theme, “Balancing financial and non-financial wealth”, is particularly encouraged, the workshop continues its tradition to accept articles relevant to family firm management and add value to the development of the family business field in general, and to our understanding of drivers of different types of family business performance, in particular. For example, we welcome papers exploring the intersection between Family Business and Entrepreneurship, Strategy, Gender, Ethics, Sustainability, Innovation, Digitalization, Internationalization, Governance, Accounting, Control, Marketing, Practice, Emotions, HR, Careers.

2022-11-07

CeFEO