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Entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance in family SMEs: the moderating effects of family, women, and strategic involvement in the board of directors

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Abstract

Entrepreneurial success in family SMEs is largely determined by the knowledge, skills, and new ideas contributed by board directors, the most important actors in the formulation of corporate strategy and decision making. The composition of family SME boards has traditionally been homogeneous, as such boards usually comprise male family members. Boards’ contributions, however, depend on their level of diversity and strategic involvement. This study analyzes the moderating effects of two main sources of board diversity in family firms, family involvement level and gender diversity, as potential means of enhancing family firms’ success when exploiting entrepreneurial initiatives. This study also explores whether these two potential moderators depend on the strategic involvement of the board directors. Based on a sample of 230 Spanish family firms, we found that the link between entrepreneurial orientation and performance is stronger in firms with lower levels of family involvement and higher levels of gender diversity in the board. Moreover, the board’s high strategic involvement may strengthen the positive impact of gender diversity and change the moderating influence of family involvement from negative to positive.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Financial Economics I, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Elcano 21, 48008, Bilbao, Spain

    Unai Arzubiaga

  2. Department of Financial Economics I, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Avda. Lehendakari Agirre 83, 48015, Bilbao, Spain

    Txomin Iturralde & Amaia Maseda

  3. Department of Entrepreneurship, Strategy and Innovation, LUMS Centre for Family Business, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster, LA1 4YX, UK

    Josip Kotlar

Authors
  1. Unai Arzubiaga
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  2. Txomin Iturralde
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  3. Amaia Maseda
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  4. Josip Kotlar
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Correspondence to Unai Arzubiaga.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Table 6 Common method bias
Full size table

Appendix 2

$$ t=\frac{\mathrm{PathHighSIBD}-\mathrm{PathLowSIBD}}{\mathrm{Sp}\ \sqrt{\frac{1}{m}+\frac{1}{n}}}\approx t\ \left(m+n-2\right) $$

This is a one-tailed t-Student distribution with (m + n – 2) degrees of freedom, where Sp is the pooled estimator for the variance, m is the number of cases in the sample of family SMEs with high SIBD, n is the number of cases with low SIBD, and SE is the standard error for the path provided by the SmartPLS 2.0 software package with the bootstrap technique.

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Arzubiaga, U., Iturralde, T., Maseda, A. et al. Entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance in family SMEs: the moderating effects of family, women, and strategic involvement in the board of directors. Int Entrep Manag J 14, 217–244 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11365-017-0473-4

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