Improving continuity by simplifying the structure of family firms: a replication study

Abstract

This study replicates a research undertaken in 2008 by Lambrecht and Lievens, Pruning the Family Tree: An Unexplored Path to Family Business Continuity and Family Harmony . Adopting an extended replication approach, this work analyzes a sample of family firms in Sardinia to investigate how and why family businesses prune the family tree to safeguard family harmony and business continuity. Our findings confirm that pruning is an effective strategy for managing complexity, increasing firm performance, and supporting succession plans. We extend the original study by stressing the relevance of pruning during succession.

Replication studies in top management journals: An empirical investigation of prevalence, types, outcomes, and impact

“…Recently, the need for replication studies has been stressed in many fields and sub-disciplines of management research, including strategic management (e.g., Bettis et al, 2016), organization studies (Wright and Sweeney, 2015), international business (e.g., Aguinis et al, 2017), family business (e.g., De Massis et al, 2020), and entrepreneurship (e.g., Maula and Stam, 2020). Replication studies are also an important part of the aims and scope of Management Review Quarterly (MRQ) (Block and Kuckertz, 2018), which publishes replication studies of various types and from various disciplines (e.g., Dettori and Floris, 2022;Szumal et al, 2021;Van Scotter, 2020;Yuan et al, 2020).…”