Strategic responses of the family businesses in accommodation industry: lessons for overcoming crises

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this study is threefold: 1) to examine the relevance of specific strategic orientations for family businesses in the context of an intense crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic; 2) to investigate the role of a family adaptability in surviving the crisis; and 3) to assess how proactive strategic responses connected with marketing or retrenchment responses connected with reducing costs relate to the expected survival of the crisis.Design/methodology/approachThe method adopted is a quantitative research approach. The theoretical framework uses a partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) for the data collected from an online survey of a sample of 544 family businesses in the accommodation industry.FindingsThis paper makes three main findings. First, family businesses that invest in operational marketing actions as a strategic response to the crisis have a high expectation of surviving the crisis. Second, family businesses that reduce their operational and labor costs as a strategic response have a low expectation of surviving the crisis. Third, the family business’s adaptability is also fundamental to their expectation of survival.Originality/valueThis is the first paper to identify the possible reactions of family businesses to the COVID-19 crisis. the authors show that there are proactive or retrenchment strategic responses, and the authors relate those responses to the expectancy of surviving the crisis. This is also the first study to examine the relevance of family adaptability as a measure of the resilience of family businesses and, therefore, as a determinant of the expectation of surviving the crisis.

Resilience in Family Businesses: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Many studies in our review measured resilience as an outcome (e.g., Acquaah et al, 2011; Bürgel et al, 2023) and operationalized it as financial performance (typically compared to non-family businesses) (e.g., Brunelli et al, 2023; Minichilli et al, 2016). Only a few studies looked at other resilience outcomes, such as innovation, survival, and longevity (e.g., Crespo et al, 2023; Randolph, Memili, et al, 2022; Stafford et al, 2010, 2013). In future resilience research on family businesses, it is crucial to delve deeper into key outcomes of demonstrated resilience that are central to, and idiosyncratic for, the unique organizational form of family businesses and long-term oriented objective of passing on a healthy business to the next generation (Lumpkin et al, 2010).…”

Crisis management in family firms: do religion and secularization of family decision-makers’ matter?

“…Hence, given this limited understanding of religion in crisis management and the heterogeneity of FFs, qualitative research is crucial for developing insights and advancing FF research (Reay, 2014;De Massis and Kammerlander, 2021). Qualitative research provides additional insights into crisis management (Byrne and Shepherd, 2015) and addresses the complexity of FFs (De Massis and Kammerlander, 2021), complementing the majority of quantitative research (Çetin, 2021;Crespo et al, 2023). Therefore, following recent studies (Lepp€ aaho and Ritala, 2022; Mitter et al, 2022), we adopt a qualitative and interpretative approach to gather rich data (De Massis and Kotlar, 2014;Nordqvist et al, 2009).…”

“…Early evidence by Kraus et al (2020) shows that FFs are able to respond quickly by adapting their business models and using digital technologies to optimize their business processes. Further studies show that FFs change their organizational behavior and enhance their adaptive capacity (Soluk et al, 2021;Crespo et al, 2023), can adopt effective crisis management practices and maintain stakeholder trust (Mitter et al, 2022). FFs with a higher financing capacity and a stronger focus on internationalization (Eckey and Memmel, 2022), as well as a high level of innovation before a crisis (Lepp€ aaho and Ritala, 2022), are better able to cope with the challenges of pandemics.…”

“…More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has posed enormous challenges for FFs, resulting in a significant rise in academic scrutiny of crisis management (De Massis and Rondi, 2020;Soluk et al, 2021;Eckey and Memmel, 2022;Le Breton-Miller and Miller, 2022). Research has found that financial crises can trigger different responses towards crisis management (Eckey and Memmel, 2022;Crespo et al, 2023). Early evidence by Kraus et al (2020) shows that FFs are able to respond quickly by adapting their business models and using digital technologies to optimize their business processes.…”

“…However, there is mixed empirical evidence on crisis management showing that FFs differ in their responses to financial crises. In addition, studies also show contradictory findings (Crespo et al, 2023;Mihoti c et al, 2023). This highlights the need for an in-depth analysis of FFs and an exploration of the different factors related to FDMs.…”