Family firms and innovation: a revisit to SEW perspective

ABSTRACT

Extant literature on innovation in family firms has generated mixed results regarding the preference of family firms for innovation. By integrating literature on family ownership and management, we propose an inverted U-shaped relationship between family firm ownership concentration and innovation. Our Poisson regression-based model on a sample of 532 family firms from India for ten years shows that family ownership concentration follows an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation. Our findings further suggest that the family CEO moderates this inverted U-shaped relationship.

KEYWORDS:

• Family ownership concentration
• family CEO
• socioemotional wealth
• emerging markets

Acknowledgment

We are thankful to Editor in chief and the anonymous reviewers, whose insights and comments tremendously helped us to improve the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arpita Agnihotri

Arpita Agnihotri is an Assistant Professor of Management at Pennsylvania State University in Harrisburg, USA. Her primary research interests include International. She has published in international journals of repute like Journal of World Business and International Journal of Human Resource Management.

Saurabh Bhattacharya

Saurabh Bhattacharya is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Newcastle University Business School, UK. His primary research interests include Celebrity Endorsement. He has published in international journals of repute like Journal of Advertising Research and Psychology & Marketing.