System‐Spanning Values Work and Entrepreneurial Growth in Family Firms

Abstract

Culture and values are key drivers of corporate entrepreneurship in early stages of family firm development, but value conflicts often arise over time that progressively inhibit their entrepreneurial efforts. How can family firms reconcile conflicting values to sustain corporate entrepreneurship over time? Our 45‐year longitudinal case study of a large global family firm shows that family business leaders’ practices of invoking and flexibly using family and business values were crucial to achieve sustained entrepreneurial behaviour and growth over an extended period of time. We theorize these efforts as system‐spanning values work enfolding through specific family, business, and temporal mechanisms. By identifying and elucidating three types of values work (i.e., rooting, revitalizing, and spreading), our study advances current understanding of the micro‐foundations underpinning the relationship between values and entrepreneurship in family firms.

Corporate Entrepreneurship and Family Business: Learning Across Domains

“…Additionally, psychological ownership has been depicted as an idiosyncratic element of the ways in which family firms enact CE (Lee et al, 2019). This is also the case for culture, values and conflicts (Raitis et al, 2021). However, given that in family firms, the emergence of such dimensions is distinct from that in other organizations (Gagné et al, 2014), we suggest explicitly including them in the list of components and mechanisms when studying CE.…”

“…Current CE research has largely paid little attention to temporal issues, which the article by Raitis et al (2021) aims to address. The authors scrutinize the 45‐year history of a Finnish company and analyse how CE has developed over time.…”

“…Habitual entrepreneurship 'multiple business ownership' (Wright et al, 1998) for culture, values and conflicts (Raitis et al, 2021). However, given that in family firms, the emergence of such dimensions is distinct from that in other organizations (Gagné et al, 2014), we suggest explicitly including them in the list of components and mechanisms when studying CE.…”

“…A third article focuses on the differences between family and non‐family firms in terms of franchising (Chirico et al, 2021). One article focuses on how a long‐term perspective, covering several decades and thus a substantial part of a company’s life cycle, affects CE and its outcomes (Raitis et al, 2021), whereas another article explores the concept of risk‐taking (Fang et al, 2021), which is an important organizational antecedent of any CE activity. Theories applied include, among others, the resource‐based view, contingency theory, and family system theory – again mirroring the broad perspective required to advance the field.…”

“…What does CE yield to a family firm and to the enterprising family? Certainly, organizational outcomes such as growth (Raitis et al, 2021) or internationalization (Fang et al, 2021) are of great importance. However, given the inherent multilevel nature of family firms’ strategic reference point (Kotlar et al, 2014), at least two outcome dimensions should be added to the model, i.e., one of individual family members who are not involved in the firm and one of the family as a group.…”