Family Firm Goals and their Effects on Strategy, Family and Organization Behavior: A Review and Research Agenda

• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Author: Franz W. Kellermanns,Ralph I. Williams,Torsten M. Pieper,Joseph H. Astrachan
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12167
• Date: 01 January 2018

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 20, S63–S82 (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12167

Family Firm Goals and their Effects on

Strategy, Family and Organization

Behavior: A Review and Research Agenda

Ralph I. Williams Jr, Torsten M. Pieper,1Franz W. Kellermanns2,3

and Joseph H. Astrachan1

Jennings A. Jones College of Business, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132, USA, 1Coles

College of Business, Kennesaw State University,Kennesaw, GA 30144, USA, 2University of North Carolina at

Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA, and 3WHU (Otto Beisheim School of Management), Burgpl. 2,

56179 Vallendar, Germany

Corresponding author email: ralph.williams@mtsu.edu

Goals are a key differentiator between family businesses and non-family businesses.

To improve understanding of this topic, the authors take stock of what they know

about goals in family business. They synthesize prior research f‌indings and classify

the research into f‌ive categories:family business goal antecedents; goal characteristics;

goal-related outcomes; moderators of goal outcomes; and feedback loop. The paper

concludes by highlighting future research to advance both family business goal and

general management research.

Introduction

Family business research has grown exponentially

(e.g. Debicki et al. 2009; Stewart and Miner 2011;

Xi et al. 2015) and researchers’ interest in family

business goals has f‌lourished (G´

omez-Mejia et al.

2007; Zellweger et al. 2013). Research on family

business goals is vitally important as goals deter-

mine the family f‌irm’s willingness to act. As such,

goals are often cited as a building block of family

business def‌initions (Chua et al. 1999; De Massis

et al. 2014). Furthermore, goals are seen to have a

signif‌icant effect on strategic decisions and behav-

ior in family businesses (Chrisman et al. 2015; Kot-

lar et al. 2017; Mazzelli et al. 2017; Sciascia et al.

2015), and family business goals are often driven

by family-centric and often non-f‌inancial motivations

(Basu 2004; Gagn´

eet al. 2014; Lee and Rogoff1996).

Family business goals are a source of family business

heterogeneity, differentiating individual family f‌irms

from other family f‌irms (Chrisman et al. 2012; Chua

et al. 2012; Garc´

ıa- ´

Alvarez and L´

opez-Sintas 2001;

Sirmon and Hitt 2003) as family business goals are

often a ref‌lection of the desires or intentions of the

f‌irm’s most salient stakeholder group, the family

(Mitchell et al. 2011). Lastly,the literature on goals in

family business focuses on a plethora of intersecting

topics, such as socio-emotional wealth (SEW) (e.g.

G´

omez-Mejia et al. 2007; Zellweger et al. 2012), ref-

erence points (e.g. Cennamo et al. 2012; Kotlar et al.

2014a), and intra-family succession (De Massis et al.

2008; Sharma et al. 1997), among many others.

Given the growth in family business research, the

importance of exploring family business goals and the

diversity of topics related to family business goals,

we appear to be at a critical juncture where an assess-

ment of the current state of the literature is called for

(Vazquez and Rocha 2016). The present study aims

to address this need by providing a holistic look at the

body of family business goal research, classifying

this research into antecedents, characteristics, related

outcomes, moderators and feedback loops, and pro-

viding guidance for the development of this important

area of research. The literature review employed the

systematic literature review approach (Tranf‌ieldet al.

2003), resulting in 347 articles in total that touched on

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S64 R.I. Williams Jr et al.

family business goals and 124 articles that informed

our review in greater detail.

This review makes multiple contributions to the lit-

erature. First, it provides family business researchers

with a comprehensive overview of family business

goal research and identif‌ies emergent themes.

Second, as family businesses outnumber non-family

businesses and contribute signif‌icantly to the overall

economic activity and employment worldwide (e.g.

De Massis et al. 2015; Gedajlovic et al. 2012), a

synthesis of the literature highlights the importance

of goal research for the understanding of this

worldwide dominant organizational form (Carney

et al. 2015; IFERA 2003). Third, this investigation

develops a conceptual model that links the different

elements of goal-related research, highlighting the

need explicitly to acknowledge and incorporate

feedback loops that are present in the goal-setting

process. Lastly,this work provides a research agenda.

This paper is structured as follows: First, a descrip-

tion of search methods and the criteria used for inclu-

sion in our review is presented. Next, a review of the

literature based on the topic categories of family busi-

ness goal antecedents, family business goal character-

istics, family business goal-related outcomes, family

business goal outcome moderators and the family

business goal feedback loop is discussed. Next, future

research directions are presented. To conclude, prac-

titioner implications and limitations are discussed.

Search methods and inclusion criteria

To ensure an exhaustive review of the extant family

business goals literature, Tranf‌ield et al.’s (2003) sys-

tematic literature review method was applied. This

method was selected because it has also been applied

in prominent review pieces in other areas (e.g. Carter

and Liane Easton 2011; Rashman et al. 2009). Hence,

the search involved f‌ive major steps leading to the in-

clusion criteria. Figure 1 provides an illustration of

the search steps and inclusion criteria.

The f‌irst step in the search process included identi-

fying oft-cited goals articles from mainstream litera-

ture. The search used ‘goals’ as a search term and in-

cluded an assessment of the number of citations. The

f‌irst step produced ten articles, including the follow-

ing: Connolly et al. (1980), Cyert and March (1963),

Latham and Locke (2006), Locke (1968), Locke and

Latham (2006), Ord´

o˜

nez et al. (2009), Perrow (1961),

Seijts et al. (2004), Simon (1964) and Thompson and

McEwen (1958). Although not all ten articles focus

on goals, each provides a substantial discussion of

goals. All ten articles were included to ensure a wide-

reaching search in the second step, where the litera-

ture citing the articles identif‌ied in the f‌irst step with

‘family business’ or ‘family f‌irm’ in the title became

candidates for the review.

The third step of this research process sought to

identify seminal family business goals articles. The

articles identif‌ied included the following: Craig and

Moores (2010), Lee and Rogoff (1996), Tagiuri and

Davis (1992) and Zellweger et al. (2013). Next, any

articles citing these seminal family business goals

articles with ‘family business’ or ‘family f‌irm’ in the

title became additional candidates for the review.

The fourth step began by seeking goal-related

phrases that might be included as search words, and

those phrases included the following: goals; prefer-

ences; logics; balanced scorecard (BSC); desires; tar-

gets; and intentions. Then a search was conducted for

articles with ‘family business’ or ‘family f‌irm’ in the

title that included one of these goal-related phrases in

their abstract.

The four steps in the search process produced

347 potential articles published in peer-reviewedjour-

nals. As the f‌ield of family business research is rel-

atively young, but has grown signif‌icantly in recent

decades (e.g. Debicki et al. 2009), the search was

not limited to a specif‌ic time period. Following Tran-

f‌ield and colleagues’ (2003) prescriptions, indepen-

dent assessments were made of the abstracts of arti-

cles identif‌ied, including in the next step only articles

making solid conceptual or empirical contributions

to the family business goals literature. For empiri-

cal papers, the abstract needed to indicate goals as

an independent, dependent, mediating or moderating

variable. For conceptual papers, goals needed to be

the dominant topic in the paper.

This resulted in an initial set of 133 articles. In the

f‌ifth step, each of these articles was studied in detail,

yielding a f‌inal set of 124 articles for this review.

Furthermore, this step resulted in the synthesis of the

f‌ive topic areas in the literature that guides the review

below.

Appendix S1 in the Supporting information pro-

vides a list of the articles included in the review with

the authors, year published, and whether the article

is conceptual or empirical. Of the 124 articles in-

cluded in the review, 82 (66.13%) are empirical, and

44 (33.87%) are conceptual. Of the 82 empirical arti-

cles reviewed, 66 (80.49% of the empirical) are quan-

titative, and 16 (19.51% of the empirical) are quali-

tative. Appendix S2 displays the number of articles

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