Nadine Kammerlander

An increasing stream of research has started to investigate innovation behavior in family firms, which is expected to be distinct from that of other types of firms; however results have been mixed so far. Conducting a meta-analysis of 110 studies covering 42 countries we synthesize prior work and extend prior knowledge on the precise linkages of family control and innovation behavior. We find that innovation input is lower in family as compared to non-family firms, yet innovation output is enhanced. We argue that lower input can be explained by the investment and decision making preferences of family owners. Higher output can be explained by family-firms' capabilities to efficaciously manage R&D resources. We further discuss and test the effect of important family-, firm-, and institutional-level contingencies. Based on the results from our meta-analytical analysis we develop new insights into the sources of competitive advantage of family firms and propose new directions for further research.

When 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.

In our quantitative study we investigate the antecedents of two distinct exit routes. Building on information asymmetry theory, we discuss that the owner's inferior knowledge about the ability of potential family external (in contrast to family internal) successors renders a family internal transition more likely. However, this information asymmetry can be mitigated by activities such as owners' screening and successors' signaling efforts to unveil the successor's ability. Our data exhibits a positive effect of signaling and an inverted u-shaped effect of screening on the probability of an external succession. Socioemotional wealth, generated by long ownership duration, moderates these effects.