Comparing the Innovation and Export Performance of Hungarian Family and Non-Family Enterprises: Experiences Drawn from Empirical Surveys

Abstract

Family enterprises are considered to be one of the oldest and still dominant forms of business organisations. However, their innovation activity is an emerging area of research, especially in the Central and Eastern European region. The aim of our study is to address this research gap by investigating, with the help of statistical tools, the relationship between the familiness of the firms, their innovation activity, and their export activity on representative samples of Hungarian SMEs in the years 2017, 2020, and 2022. Our results suggest that the innovation activity of exporting Hungarian SMEs is more significant than that of non-exporting SMEs. However, the relationship between familiness and innovation activity is not uniform in the three analyzed years, and the relationship between familiness and export activity is not significant. The findings of this study, that firms’ innovation and exporting activities can be mutually reinforcing, can be used by policymakers, curriculum developers in business education, and entrepreneurs. One of the main limitations of our research is that the 2020 and 2022 surveys were conducted after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and the shock of the Russian–Ukrainian war, respectively; thus, the decisions of the firms could have been influenced by the unpredictability of the external environment.

Beyond Tradition: Exploring the Dimensions of Professionalization and Competitiveness in Hungarian Family Firms

“…However, in our sample, family firms could not rely on their innovation capabilities to reach higher performance, thus leading to the conclusion that they seem only as innovative as non-family businesses, no better or less. This is similar to the findings of Paunović et al (2023) who also found that family and non-family businesses are equally committed to introducing innovations in their business processes and to Csákné Filep et al (2023) who found no difference between family and non-family firms regarding their innovation performance in their 2017 and 2022 samples.…”

“…They claimed if family firms were more similar to non-family firms and professionalized, they could reach a higher level of performance and be more competitive. Comparing family and non-family businesses along different corporate measurements has a long history from various research contexts, such as the US , Italy (Culasso et al, 2015), Finland (Kirmanen & Kansikas, 2010;Larimo, 2013) Chile (Martínez et al, 2007) and recently Hungary (Wimmer & Matolay, 2020;Csákné Filep et al, 2023) with mixed results, either family firms outperform non-family businesses, or they indeed have some kind of a disadvantage of family ownership.…”

“…Although many excellent articles appeared about the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises in Hungary (Szerb et al, 2014;Tálas & Rózsa, 2015) only a few recent articles paid specific attention to family and non-family businesses comparison (Csákné Filep et al, 2023) from a resource and capability-based point of view. Family firms play a dominant role in Hungary, as the possibility for legal entrepreneurship emerged after the regime change in 1990.…”

Innovation and Family Business in the Digital Age: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Addressing the innovative activity of family businesses, with the help of statistical tools, the relationship between the family character of companies, their innovative activity and their export activity demonstrate an opportunity that is based on the possibilities of integration and mutual strengthening of innovation and export activities in parallel (Csákné et al, 2023). The It is mentioned that family businesses show resistance to change and that business families seek continuous improvement, and although this generates conflicts, it should be considered as an opportunity, because it is possible to create solid links to build work environments with corporate values (Combs et al, 2020).…”

“…At the academic level, we find a fundamental opportunity that would be the inclusion of FB within economic theory for research in universities. (Johansson et al, 2020), sustained by the human resources of the MZ generation (Kim & Kim, 2022); however, the operational or the academic is insufficient in the digital age and, as real opportunities, there is the creation of ecosystems for co-creation of value, collaborative agreements, open FBs and the linking of family value and business value (Randerson & Estrada-Robles, 2023;Csákné Filep et al, 2023;Lambrechts et al, 2023;De Groote et al, 2023).…”