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Melanie Maria Richards
Former Member
Title
Dr.
Last Name
Richards
First name
Melanie Maria
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1 - 9 of 9
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PublicationType: journal articleJournal: Journal of Product Innovation Management
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PublicationExploring the impact of firm communication on the organization's commitment to ethical labels: Do family firms decouple less?Due to increasing environmental complexity firms can no longer rely on their taken-for-granted legitimacy but instead have to actively manage their image in society through communication. This is particularly true for firms operating in industries characterized by severe ethical challenges such as commodity farming. With the help of quantitative text analysis, this paper seeks to scrutinize the firms' legitimizing strategies in the coffee, tea and chocolate industry, assessed through archival website content. Based on the institutional logics literature and the French Pragmatist Sociology, my theorizing suggests that firms will mostly rely on vocabulary associated with two distinct worlds, the ‘domestic world' and the ‘civic world,' when seeking to maintain their legitimacy vis-à-vis western consumers. I argue that the prevalence of each world within firm communication affects the organization's effort to ensure work standards by collaborating with ethical labeling organizations. The impact of the firm's legitimizing strategy on the organization's labeling effort in turn depends on whether the firm can be classified as family firm as the latter is less likely to engage in decoupling.Type: conference paper
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PublicationType: conference paper
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PublicationVocabularies of divergent legitimizing strategies and their effect on ethical standardizationDue to increasing environmental complexity firms can no longer rely on their taken-for-granted legitimacy but instead have to actively manage their image in society through communication. This is particularly true for firms operating in industries characterized by severe ethical challenges such as commodity farming. With the help of quantitative text analysis, this paper seeks to scrutinize the firms' legitimizing strategies in the coffee, tea and chocolate industry, assessed through archival website content. Based on the institutional logics literature and the French Pragmatist Sociology, my theorizing suggests that firms will mostly rely on vocabulary associated with two distinct worlds, the ‘domestic world' and the ‘civic world,' when seeking to maintain their legitimacy vis-à-vis western consumers. I argue that the prevalence of each world within firm communication affects the organization's effort to ensure work standards by collaborating with ethical labeling organizations. The impact of the firm's legitimizing strategy on the organization's standardization effort in turn depends on whether the firm can be classified as family firm as the latter is less likely to engage in decoupling.Type: conference paper
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PublicationType: conference paper
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PublicationThe Incumbent's Dilemma when Exiting the Firm: Torn between the Family and the Corporate LogicWhen considering their own exit from the firm, incumbents are often challenged with two dilemmas. First, they need to hand over management to either a family-internal or a family-external successor. Second, they are often confronted with the trade-off between the successors' levels of ability versus willingness, particularly when relying on family-internal candidates. Based on institutional logics literature we argue that these dilemmas arise as the corporate and the family logic lead to conflicting expectations regarding which exit route and which candidate to prefer. We hypothesize that past experiences, the level of education, and situational stimuli affect incumbents' preferences for different succession candidates by focusing individual attention on either corporate or familial goals. In order to test our hypotheses we rely on responses to an exit scenario, completed by 2024 owner-managers of Swiss SMEs. Our findings contribute to literatures on entrepreneurial exit, institutional logics, and family firm succession.Type: conference paperJournal: Academy of Management Proceedings
Scopus© Citations 2 -
PublicationType: conference paper
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PublicationAttention-based View of Family Firm Adaptation to Discontinuities: The Role of Non-financial GoalsAdaptation to discontinuous innovation constitutes a major challenge for most incumbent firms. Recent research shows that this is particularly true for family-influenced firms that face specific emotional barriers to non-paradigmatic adoption of new technologies. However, little is known about variance in family firms' abilities to adapt to such discontinuous innovations. Based on seven longitudinal case studies in the German consumer goods industry we reveal how variance in the family CEOs' non-financial goals causes substantial heterogeneity in the family firms' adaptation behavior regarding the type, speed, intensity, flexibility, and persistence of their adaptation. Those behavioral differences can be explained by applying an attention-based view: Variance in non-financial goals of family business owner-managers entails heterogeneity in key decision makers' sensemaking and subsequently affects organizational adaptation. Our findings contribute to literature by providing a more nuanced understanding of (family) firms' adaptation heterogeneity and also bring about important implications for practitionersType: conference paper
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PublicationThe Family-to-Business Strategies and Experiences of Owner-Managers in Switzerland and Germany: Implications for Personal Well-Being(Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015)
;Jennings, Jennifer ;Eddleston, Kimberly ;Jennings, P. DevereauxSarathy, RaviType: book section