In the family way: an exploration of family business resilience

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to explore the concept of resilience set within a family business context and considers how familiness and the nature of noneconomic factors, such as relationship dynamics influence performance. This paper provides new insights into the nature and impact of familiness as a mediating device, uncovering the potential for reframing resilience theory and practice. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on a review of the extant literature in the areas of resilience and familiness as a means of developing a deeper understanding of the social-ecological system of the family firm. Findings The study reveals family business as a complex interrelationship between complimentary social-ecological systems. It highlights the complexity of family business and the challenges of the relational nature of familiness and how this presents additional layers of complexity in the decision making process and implementation. Research limitations/implications The paper draws on literature that is dominated by western culture and may partially or not at all reflect the issues associated with organisational resilience in family firms with such backgrounds and their culturally bound social-ecological systems. Originality/value The paper seeks to fill a knowledge gap by exploring the key elements of organisational resilience in the context of familiness. The work calls for further research into the nature of familiness connections mediating the nature of family relational dynamics. It further provides a framework indicating how these elements can shape and subvert day-to-day management events, raising implications for theory and practice and calls for deeper empirical research to be undertaken.

COVID 19 and the Business Management Crisis: An Empirical Study in SMEs

“…Runyan [39] studied how SMEs react to management crises caused by crises/natural disasters and concluded that they suffer a highly negative impact, given their vulnerability, dependence on public support, and the psychological and financial effects on their owners. This means that business owners have to be resilient to face the consequences of crises [26], as this organizational capacity will let firms remain sustainable in turbulent environments [12]. However, the level of that capacity depends on intangible factors in business owners and firms (e.g., culture, leadership), as argued by Ates and Bititci [38].…”

“…However, the level of that capacity depends on intangible factors in business owners and firms (e.g., culture, leadership), as argued by Ates and Bititci [38]. Individual resilience must be joined to organizational resilience to transform and adapt the tangible, human, and intangible resources associated with new strategies [12], i.e., strategic agility as suggested by Liu et al [30], to achieve a new dynamic capacity that stimulates such behavior [12].…”

“…This means that their managers/owners are increasingly transforming threats into opportunities and re-inventing business, because as several authors point out [13,14,38], they have always faced challenges, adaptation, and transformation, something shown in their positive state of mind (Figure 3). Additionally, the fact that only 24% of firms have reduced staff numbers to attenuate the effects of the lockdown shows the individual and organizational resilience that characterizes this typology of firms, where this organizational capacity is crucial to ensure the economic stability of business in an uncertain, turbulent situation [12,26].…”

“…These data show the importance of studying the impact of this pandemic on businesses, since this business typology (SMEs, family-owned or not) plays a crucial role in countries' economies, for employment and in creating wealth [11]. On the other hand, they are weaker financially and experience greater uncertainty as the crisis continues regarding its long-term effects [8], and so surviving this crisis is an unprecedented challenge [10,12]. This means that firms have to adapt, transform [13], and embrace changes to create value [14], as the only survivors and winners will be those that adapt better to changing conditions [10].…”

“…This global crisis and its effects on the business sector guides the theoretical framework of this empirical study towards organizational resilience, a perspective adopted in recent research on business in the pandemic situation [4,12]. Rangachari and Woods [18] concluded that the literature on organizational resilience includes three key constructs: "(1) foresight (ability to predict something bad could happen), ( 2) coping (ability to prevent something bad from becoming worse), and (3) recovery (ability to recover from a bad occurrence)."…”