Research summary How does a business family manage its business portfolio in times of declining performance to sustain the portfolio's long‐term endurance? Drawing on social identity theory and six family business portfolios from Pakistan, we find that business families may prefer to shut down a satellite business rather than sell it, which is primarily driven by identity considerations. In addition, the family's goal to recycle the assets, the aim to restart the business later, and the increasing decline in performance are important contingency factors. This study contributes to the literature on portfolio entrepreneurship, business exit, and the enduring entrepreneurship of family firms. Managerial summary Family business managers and practitioners can benefit from our work, which provides evidence of how family firm portfolios can respond to business decline and ensure enduring entrepreneurship. Shutting down a satellite firm instead of selling it is a promising turnaround strategy that can prevent a family's identity loss while supporting the family business portfolio's continuity. Copyright © 2016 Strategic Management Society.

This study investigates the effects of both family and non-family social capital on firm performance. Specifically, we contend that non-family social capital has a stronger effect than family social capital and also serves as a mediator between family social capital and firm performance. Using a sample of 172 Spanish family firms that includes two respondents per firm, we test a structural model that confirms our hypotheses. Our results extend the understanding of social capital beyond family firms by exploring both family-and nonfamily-based social relationships in a context in which social factors are predominant.

The overarching intent of this manuscript is to heighten awareness to the concept of commitment escalation as it bears on a failing family business. Specifically, drawing on the concept of emotional ownership, together with self‐justification arguments, we (1) identify factors considered to be most forceful in contributing to the presence of commitment escalation and thus, resistance to change in a failing family business, and (2) model these related factors in a form that can serve heuristically to stimulate future empirical research capable of testing for the construct validity of commitment escalation in a family business context.

No abstract