Strategic innovation and new product development in family firms : an empirically grounded theoretical framework

Purpose – This study aims to investigate the relationship between the presence of the family variable within a business enterprise and the managerial factors affecting the success of new product development (NPD). This can be structured into three research questions: What is the relationship between the presence of the family variable within a business enterprise and the managerial factors affecting the success of NPD activities? How the managerial factors affecting the NPD process are faced in family firms? Which are the main differences (e.g. strengths and/or weaknesses) in dealing with the managerial factors affecting the NPD process between family and non‐family firms?Design/methodology/approach – The study employs a grounded‐theory and case‐study approach to investigate the relationship between the presence of the family variable within a business enterprise and the managerial factors affecting the success of NPD. The starting point is an in‐depth literature review on the managerial factors different...

[1]  Manuel Núñez-Nickel,et al.  The Role of Family Ties in Agency Contracts , 2001 .

[2]  Renato Tagiuri,et al.  On the Goals of Successful Family Companies , 1992 .

[3]  Morgan Swink,et al.  Product Development—Faster, On-Time , 2002 .

[4]  Linda L. Smith,et al.  Team Building and Conflict Management: Strategies for Family Businesses , 1997 .

[5]  H. J. Pohl,et al.  Entrepreneurial Orientation and Family Forces in the New Germany: Similarities and Differences Between East and West German Entrepreneurs: , 2000 .

[6]  Sam H. Lane.  An Organizational Development/Team-Building Approach to Consultation with Family Businesses , 1989 .

[7]  Robert G. Cooper,et al.  New Product Performance and Product Innovation Strategies , 1986 .

[8]  A. Strauss,et al.  The Discovery of Grounded Theory , 1967 .

[9]  Amy R. Lyman.  Customer Service: Does Family Ownership Make a Difference? , 1991 .

[10]  John A. Davis,et al.  The Influence of Life Stage on Father-Son Work Relationships in Family Companies , 1989 .

[11]  Jean Hartley,et al.  Case study research , 2004 .

[12]  M. Parry,et al.  Identifying New Product Successes in China , 1994 .

[13]  K. Kaye,et al.  Resolving Family Business Disputes Through Mediation , 1997 .

[14]  E. Fama,et al.  Agency Problems and Residual Claims , 1983 .

[15]  H. Thamhain.  Managing technologically innovative team efforts toward new product success , 1990 .

[16]  Drew S. Mendoza,et al.  An Interview with Judy G. Barber: Prenuptial Agreements, Intimacy, Trust and Control , 1997 .

[17]  Kathryn Cormican,et al.  Auditing best practice for effective product innovation management , 2004 .

[18]  John M. Davis,et al.  Challenges Facing Family Companies in the Gulf Region , 2000 .

[19]  Klaus G. Grunert,et al.  Company Competencies as a Network: The Role of Product Development , 2000 .

[20]  G. Lynn,et al.  Marketing and Discontinuous Innovation: The Probe and Learn Process , 1996 .

[21]  R. Calantone,et al.  An Integrative Model of the New Product Development Process , 1988 .

[22]  A. Strauss,et al.  Basics of Qualitative Research , 1992 .

[23]  H. Ernst.  Success Factors of New Product Development: A Review of the Empirical Literature , 2002 .

[24]  Roger J. Calantone,et al.  Purchasing Joins the NPD team , 2003 .

[25]  Johannes H. M. Welsch.  Family Enterprises in the United Kingdom, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Spain: A Transnational Comparison , 1991 .

[26]  Marc Cowling,et al.  Family Firm Research: The Need for a Methodological Rethink , 1998 .

[27]  J. Schumpeter,et al.  The Theory of Economic Development , 2017 .

[28]  R. Prince.  Family Business Mediation: A Conflict Resolution Model , 1990 .

[29]  L. Dwyer,et al.  Organizational Environment, New Product Process Activities, and Project Outcomes , 1991 .

[30]  Robert G. Cooper,et al.  How new product strategies impact on performance , 1984 .

[31]  Gary S. Lynn,et al.  Learning Is the Critical Success Factor in Developing Truly New Products , 1998 .

[32]  Lois S. Peters,et al.  Managing Discontinuous Innovation , 1998 .

[33]  Jeremy C. Stein,et al.  Efficient Capital Markets, Inefficient Firms: A Model of Myopic Corporate Behavior , 1989 .

[34]  Christopher A. Voss,et al.  Determinants of success in the development of applications software , 1985 .

[35]  John L. Ward,et al.  Family-Owned Businesses: A Thing of the Past or a Model for the Future? , 1995 .

[36]  Pramodita Sharma,et al.  Successor Attributes in Indian and Canadian Family Firms: A Comparative Study , 2000 .

[37]  R. Cooper,et al.  Determinants of Timeliness in Product Development , 1994 .

[38]  E. Poza,et al.  Changing the Family Business through Action Research , 1998 .

[39]  K. Atuahene–Gima,et al.  An exploratory analysis of the impact of market orientation on new product performance a contingency approach , 1995 .

[40]  Patricia D. Olson,et al.  The impact of the family and the business on family business sustainability , 2003 .

[41]  Craig C. Lundberg.  Unraveling Communications Among Family Members , 1994 .

[42]  K. Kaye.  The Kid Brother , 1992 .

[43]  M. C. Jensen,et al.  Harvard Business School; SSRN; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI); Harvard University - Accounting & Control Unit , 1976 .

[44]  Reginald A. Litz,et al.  Your Old Men Shall Dream Dreams, Your Young Men Shall See Visions: Toward a Theory of Family Firm Innovation with Help from the Brubeck Family , 2001 .

[45]  A. S. Bean,et al.  Why R&D Projects Succeed or Fail , 1986 .

[46]  A. Hausman,et al.  Innovativeness Among Small Businesses: Theory and Propositions for Future Research , 2005 .

[47]  Dawn Harris,et al.  Is Strategy Different for the Family-Owned Business? , 1994 .

[48]  J. J. A. M. Bronnenberg,et al.  A Dutch test with the NewProd‐Model , 1988 .

[49]  W. Dyer,et al.  The Family: The Missing Variable in Organizational Research* , 2003 .

[50]  R. Cooper,et al.  Winning Businesses in Product Development: The Critical Success Factors , 1996 .

[51]  John D. Haley,et al.  Strategic Goals and Practices of Innovative Family Businesses , 2001 .

[52]  Ulrike de Brentani.  Success and Failure in New Industrial Services , 1989 .

[53]  Christopher A. Voss,et al.  Significant Issues for the Future of Product Innovation , 1994 .

[54]  Linda Moffat,et al.  Tools and teams: competing models of integrated product development project performance , 1998 .

[55]  A. Griffin.  PDMA Research on New Product Development Practices: Updating Trends and Benchmarking Best Practices , 1997 .

[56]  W. Gibb Dyer,et al.  Consulting to family businesses : a practical guide to contracting, assessment, and implementation , 2003 .

[57]  Ross L Chapman,et al.  Complexity and learning behaviors in product innovation , 2004 .

[58]  Tony C. Garrett,et al.  Success through customer-driven new product development: A comparison of U.S. and New Zealand small entrepreneurial high technology firms , 1997 .

[59]  Pramodita Sharma,et al.  Four Bases of Family Business Successor Commitment: Antecedents and Consequences , 2005 .

[60]  G. Barczak.  New product strategy, structure, process, and performance in the telecommunications industry , 1995 .

[61]  Bernard P. Wong,et al.  Chinese Family Firms in the San Francisco Bay Area , 1992 .

[62]  J. Owens,et al.  Enabling the emergent entrepreneurial organisation to develop new products , 2002 .

[63]  Ken Moores,et al.  A 10-Year Longitudinal Investigation of Strategy, Systems, and Environment on Innovation in Family Firms , 2006 .

[64]  Shaker A. Zahra,et al.  Entrepreneurship in Family vs. Non–Family Firms: A Resource–Based Analysis of the Effect of Organizational Culture , 2004 .

[65]  D. Gerwin,et al.  Withdrawal of team autonomy during concurrent engineering , 1997 .

[66]  Alan W. Pearson,et al.  R&D project termination decisions: Processes, communication, and personnel changes , 1996 .

[67]  Douglas A. Henderson,et al.  Location Preferences of Family Firms: Strategic Decision Making or “Home Sweet Home”? , 1992 .

[68]  W. Dyer,et al.  Cultural Change in Family Firms: Anticipating and Managing Business and Family Transitions , 1986 .

[69]  John L. Ward,et al.  The family business : its governance for sustainability , 1998 .

[70]  Thomas Zellweger,et al.  Time Horizon, Costs of Equity Capital, and Generic Investment Strategies of Firms , 2007 .

[71]  Robert G. Cooper,et al.  The impact of new product strategies , 1983 .

[72]  R. Calantone,et al.  New Product Activities and Performance: The Moderating Role of Environmental Hostility , 1997 .

[73]  D. Berg,et al.  Research note: Intellectual property in the services sector: Innovation and technology management implications ☆ , 2009 .

[74]  O. Williamson.  Innovation and Market Structure , 1965, Journal of Political Economy.

[75]  Sascha Kraus,et al.  Family firm research: sketching a research field , 2011 .

[76]  Alfredo Vittorio De Massis,et al.  An exploratory investigation on NPD in Small Family Businesses from Northern Italy , 2011 .

[77]  Robert G. Cooper,et al.  Debunking the Myths of New Product Development , 1994 .

[78]  K. Kaye.  Penetrating the Cycle of Sustained Conflict , 1991 .

[79]  W. Souder,et al.  New product development success factors in American and British firms , 1999 .

[80]  Charles R. Schwenk.  Cognitive simplification processes in strategic decision‐making , 1984 .

[81]  David G. Sirmon,et al.  Managing Resources: Linking Unique Resources, Management, and Wealth Creation in Family Firms , 2003 .

[82]  Bart Van Looy,et al.  Structural ambidexterity in NPD processes: A firm-level assessment of the impact of differentiated structures on innovation performance , 2010 .

[83]  W. Dyer,et al.  Entrepreneurship and Family Business: Exploring the Connections , 1994 .

[84]  M. Parry,et al.  A Cross-National Comparative Study of New Product Development Processes: Japan and the United States , 1997 .

[85]  Francisco J. Molina-Castillo,et al.  New product performance indicators: Time horizon and importance attributed by managers ☆ , 2009 .

[86]  Israel M. Kirzner.  Competition and Entrepreneurship , 1973 .

[87]  M. Iansiti,et al.  Developing products on Internet time. , 1997, Harvard business review.

[88]  Chandra S. Mishra,et al.  Founding family controlled firms: Efficiency and value , 1998 .

[89]  L. B. Barnes,et al.  Outside Boards and Family Businesses: Another Look , 1991 .

[90]  C. Prahalad,et al.  The core competence of the corporation’, Harvard Business Review, Vol. pp. . , 1990 .

[91]  Chandra S. Mishra,et al.  Founding Family Control and Capital Structure: The Risk of Loss of Control and the Aversion to Debt , 1999 .

[92]  Ann Ledwith,et al.  Determinants of new product performance in small firms , 2009 .

[93]  Barbara Dunn,et al.  Family Enterprises in the UK: A Special Sector? , 1996 .

[94]  Roger Calantone,et al.  An Integrative Model of the New Product Development Process: An Empirical Validation , 1988 .

[95]  Pramodita Sharma,et al.  Strategic Management of the Family Business: Past Research and Future Challenges , 1997 .

[96]  W. Biemans,et al.  Creating a market-oriented product innovation process: A contingency approach , 2009 .

[97]  Jeremy C. Stein,et al.  Takeover Threats and Managerial Myopia , 1988, Journal of Political Economy.

[98]  James J. Chrisman,et al.  Defining the Family Business by Behavior , 1999 .

[99]  Randel S. Carlock,et al.  Strategic Planning for The Family Business: Parallel Planning to Unify the Family and Business , 2001 .

[100]  Hittt and Manikutty.  Strategic Management , 2006 .

[101]  Rik Donckels,et al.  Are Family Businesses Really Different? European Experiences from STRATOS , 1991 .

[102]  B. Golden.  The past is the past--or is it? The use of retrospective accounts as indicators of past strategy. , 1992, Academy of Management journal. Academy of Management.

[103]  T. Habbershon,et al.  A Resource-Based Framework for Assessing the Strategic Advantages of Family Firms , 1999 .

[104]  M. Lubatkin,et al.  Agency Relationships in Family Firms: Theory and Evidence , 2001 .

[105]  J. Barney.  Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage , 1991 .

[106]  I. MacMillan,et al.  A unified systems perspective of family firm performance , 2003 .

[107]  Kathy E. Kram,et al.  Succession in Family Firms: The Problem of Resistance , 1988 .

[108]  Daniel L. Mcconaughy.  Family CEOs vs. Nonfamily CEOs in the Family-Controlled Firm: An Examination of the Level and Sensitivity of Pay to Performance , 2000 .

[109]  M. Meulenberg,et al.  Market Orientation, Innovativeness, Product Innovation, and Performance in Small Firms , 2004 .