The socio-emotional wealth perspective is a framework widely used to examine managerial decisions, particularly within the field of family business. We evaluate, refine, and validate the FIBER 27-item scale developed by Berrone et al. (2012) as a psychometric instrument to measure the socioemotional wealth construct (SEW), defined as affective endowment embedded by family owners in their business. The findings suggest that SEW is a superordinate multidimensional construct that captures socioemotional utilities in family firms and their impact on financial performance.

This study challenges the current and dominant notion that psychological ownership is static by exploring its dynamic nature. It addresses how individual family business owners express their psychological ownership and how psychological ownership is impacted over time. Based on a longitudinal and qualitative study during a real-time exit, we conclude that family business owners assign meanings to their psychological ownership that are individual, multifold, enduring and volatile. Furthermore, we conclude that the dynamics of psychological ownership imply that it varies in meanings, among individuals, and in presence and duration of meanings. We also conclude that it is influenced by contextual circumstances, and that it is possible to liberate oneself cognitively and emotionally from psychological ownership.

Professionalization has become ubiquitous among a broad range of organizations, promising increased efficiency and legitimacy. However, extant research depicts professionalization mostly as a binary change and largely ignores its temporal and processual nature, resulting in a lack of insights into how professionalization unfolds and how organizations deal with its inherent tensions. Therefore, we take a processual perspective on professionalization, studying it as a transformation toward a more rationalized, managerialized, and formalized organization through multiple practice adoption. Relying on a longitudinal single case study of a Swedish family firm that professionalized its business and family ownership domains, our processual analysis reveals unique types of professionalization and four practice interaction mechanisms through which organizations deal with tensions in the professionalization process. We contribute by conceptualizing a process model of professionalization, casting light on practice interaction mechanisms, and outlining implications of professionalization for organizational goals.

Family-controlled firms are the most widespread form of business organization, but they have so far attracted limited attention from organizational scholars. The present work suggests that coupling research on family business organizations with organization studies will substantially benefit both areas of scholarly research. We explore how the five core defining features of family firms—ownership, management and governance, transgenerational intention, generational involvement, and perceived identity—may be illuminated by extant research in organization studies, and how, in turn, organizational studies may be extended by investigating its key themes in the empirical context of family firms.

Still research on strategizing activities and practices in the family business context is scant. At the same time there is suggested that entrepreneurial capabilities could be a useful concept to advance the study of strategizing in family firms, and corporate venturing in particular. In this paper we explore how family firm actors build entrepreneurial capabilities through strategizing activities to support their corporate venturing activities. We pay particular attention to the role of family owners/founders as core strategic actors emphasizing the importance of their resources to envision and mobilize activities needed to build these capabilities. Based on two case studies we found that entrepreneurial capabilities of performing activities for opportunity refinement, resource mobilization and customer orientation are needed to successfully launch, create and sustain new ventures.

Current research commonly investigates two different growth modes, organic growth and growth by acquisitions. Studies on acquisition-based growth typically draw on cross-sectional quantitative studies of large firms that treat all acquisitions the same. Our study takes a different approach, and explores different growth modes of a smaller sample of medium-sized companies drawing on a longitudinal, qualitative case-study design. This research design allows us to identify eight different growth modes that companies combine in unique ways over time. Thereby, we illustrate that patterns of dynamic growth in medium-sized firms are much more diverse and complex than commonly assumed.

Pressures to professionalize family firms increasingly encompass ownership practices. Relying on a 10-year single-case study, we show how the parallel professionalization of business and family governance interact over time and how conflicts of norms, introduced through professional practices, affect family and business. We thus cast an ambivalent picture of professionalization. ©