Emotions, identity, social bonds and commitment to the family business: moderating role of controlling generation

Abstract

Purpose Drawing on the stakeholder theory, the purpose of this study is to examine relationships between family identity, emotional attachment and binding social ties, and commitment of family firm owners to the family enterprise in the context of an emerging economy. Furthermore, this study examines whether the strength of the above relationships significantly vary between the founder generation and the subsequent generation of owners. Design/methodology/approach A set of hypotheses is tested by applying partial least squares structural equation modeling on a sample of 357 family-owned manufacturing companies in Bangladesh. Deploying SmartPLS (v. 3.2), the path model is analyzed through bootstrapping procedure. The moderating effect is tested through multigroup analysis. Findings The findings suggest that the relationships between emotional attachment and family identity and commitment are positive and significant, whereas the association between binding social ties and commitment was not significant. Furthermore, a multigroup analysis revealed that there is a significant difference between the founder generation and their next generation in terms of influence of binding social ties and family identity on commitment, whereas there appears to be no difference in terms of emotional attachment and commitment between the two generations. Practical implications This study shows that compared to the founder generation, the next generation prioritizes family identity and social bonds, which leads to greater levels of collective commitment to the organization. Such knowledge may provide clues to incumbent family-firm leaders by identifying the areas where they need to emphasize in generating greater levels of commitment among their successors. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this appears to be the first such study that provides a nuanced understanding of how family generation in control of the family firm influences the relationships between psychosocial components of socioemotional wealth and collective commitment of the owners of family firms in the context of an emerging economy.

Turnover intentions of non-family employees in family firms – the influence of leader mindfulness, LMX quality and affective commitment

“…The idea of social exchange between the family business leaders and members (i.e. employees) are not limited to tangible matters such as economic exchange, in fact it can be socioemotional in nature (Razzak, 2022). Intangible resources exchanged between the two parties (e.g.…”

“…Gomez-Mejia and Herrero, 2022; Hernandez-Perlines et al. , 2021; Razzak, 2022), dynamics of ownership-succession and transgenerational continuity (e.g. Suess-Reyes, 2020; Mahto et al.…”

“…The published research work in the field have particularly focused on idiosyncratic aspects of family firms such as their prioritization of socioemotional wealth (e.g. Gomez-Mejia and Herrero, 2022;Hernandez-Perlines et al, 2021;Razzak, 2022), dynamics of ownership-succession and transgenerational continuity (e.g. Suess-Reyes, 2020;Mahto et al, 2019;Toska et al, 2022), performance of family firms (e.g.…”

Work from home and workplace ostracism, beyond the COVID-19 pandemic: moderating effect of perceived organizational support

“…This stress has a spillover effect on an individual's emotions (Razzak et al ., 2022), while being constantly present at home, a measure that was suddenly thrust upon them out of necessity and not something they opted for (Choudhury et al ., 2020). Particularly after restrictions have been lifted in most societies, by the third quarter of 2021 (Al Asmi, 2021), numerous employers have discovered organizational benefits of WFH in terms of lower overhead costs, and other phenomena such as constant access to employees beyond work hours, less office politics to deal with, and so on, leading such organizations to consider new work models (Yang et al ., 2022; Razzak, 2022).…”

Thriving in private family firms as a non-family employee: an empirical study

“…, 2023). Although the extant literature on SJC shows positive association between perceptions of workers about how they are treated by their employers and their self-worth at the workplace (Razzak, 2023a), there seems to be a dearth of sufficient insights into how the perceptions of NFEs are influenced because of SJC. Particularly, there appears to be lack of sufficient empirical evidence in terms of relationships between the three dimensions of SJC and WT among NFEs in private family businesses.…”