A Cross-Cultural Perspective of Family Business Groups

Abstract

Around the world, some of the largest firms in many countries are controlled by family business groups such as Fiat in Italy, Ford in the US, Hutchison Whampoa in Hong Kong, Samsung in South Korea and many others. Further, many family groups have a long history. Although family business groups are a significant and long standing phenomenon in most parts of the world, their resilience to globalization in their use of different organizational structures have received little attention from a cross-cultural perspective. Drawing on our previous work, the study provides a theoretical framework to classify family business groups on the basis of their organizational choices from a cross-cultural perspective.

Innovation, institutions and cultures: Exploring the European context

“…As such, there was the valuable opportunity to conduct further research. Drawing on our recent work on innovation (Crowe et al, 2007;Vecchi & Brennan, 2009a, 2009b by endorsing an institution-based view (Peng & Pleggenkuhle-Miles, 2009;Luo et al, 2011) and by taking a cross-cultural perspective (Della Piana & Vivacqua, 2012;Capaldo et al, 2012a;Vecchi et al, 2013) we assessed the innovation performance of 952 firms across sixteen countries in order to identify their distinctive local innovation dynamics. By considering the Global Innovation Index 2013, the most innovative countries are namely Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland.…”

“…Although it appears that no real substantial effort has been made to study whether innovation is, or should be, managed differently in different national cultures (Hofstede, 1980;Shane, 1993;Hussler, 2004;Authors, 2009) we believe that national culture is equally a relevant lens through which the systematic comparison of similarities and differences would considerably improve our understanding of the innovation performance of European firms. Drawing on our existing work on innovation (Crowe, Vecchi, Brennan, & Coughlan, 2007;Vecchi & Brennan, 2009a, 2009bVecchi, Della Piana, & Cacia, 2013), by adopting a cross-cultural perspective (Della Piana & Vivacqua, 2012;Capaldo, Della Piana & Vecchi, 2012a;Vecchi et al, 2013) and by endorsing an institutionbased view in this paper we present an important yet understudied field in crosscultural management -the innovation performance of firms across European countries. In a recent review of cross-cultural management studies over the last five decades (Capaldo, Della Piana, Monteleone, & Sergi, 2012b), it emerges that Innovation Management, as a subject area still remains understudied.…”

“…As such, there is an opportunity to conduct valuable research. Drawing on our existing work on innovation (Crowe et al, 2007;Vecchi & Brennan, 2009a, 2009bVecchi et al, 2013) by taking a cross-cultural perspective (Della Piana & Vivacqua, 2012;Capaldo et al, 2012a;Vecchi et al, 2013) and by endorsing an institution-based view (Peng & Pleggenkuhle-Miles, 2009;Luo, Sun, & Wang Lu, 2011) in this paper we seek to assess the innovation performance of firms across sixteen European countries. The aim of this explorative study is to compare from a cross-cultural perspective the innovation performance of firms across sixteen European countries (Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, the UK) in order to identify their distinctive local innovation dynamics.…”

An Institutional-Based View of Innovation — An Explorative Comparison of Business Groups in China and India

“…Knowledge management becomes an important managerial task and formulating a sound innovation strategy is an integral part of strategic management (Luo et al, 2008). Drawing on our recent work on business groups (Della Piana et al 2012a;Della Piana et al 2012b;Vecchi et al, 2013) and on innovation (Crowe et al, 2007;Vecchi and Brennan, 2009a;Vecchi and Brennan, 2009b) and by endorsing an institution-based view in this paper we present an important yet understudied field of international management -the innovation performance of business groups across China and India. The relationship between business group affiliation and firm performance in emerging countries is attracting substantial interest (Khanna and Palepu, 2000;Khanna and Rivkin, 2001;Chacar andVissa, 2005, Cuervo-Cazurra, 2006;Kedia et al, 2006;Gaur and Kumar, 2009;Zattoni et al, 2009;Choi et al, 2011;Hoskisson et al, 2013).…”

Reframing the influence of national culture with theory-based multi-resolution simulation models

“…The authors of different studies have criticized each other’s work (Hofstede, 2006; Schwartz, 1994), and ensuing debate has led to more refined scales for considering the attributes of national cultures. At the same time, value scales have contributed to widening debate about the influence of national culture in, for example, family business groups (Vecchi et al , 2013), quality management (Vecchi and Brennan, 2011), innovation management (Vecchi et al , 2010; Wong et al , 2008), operations management (Gelfand et al , 2007; Sauers et al , 2009) and technology implementation (Haapaniemi and Mäkinen, 2009; Vecchi et al , 2010). Thus, although bipolar scales are simplistic, they have facilitated some productive debate in both research and practice.…”