ارتباط خانوادگی و بازارگرایی: رویکرد سهامداران
کد مقاله | سال انتشار | تعداد صفحات مقاله انگلیسی |
---|---|---|
19551 | 2011 | 9 صفحه PDF |
Publisher : Elsevier - Science Direct (الزویر - ساینس دایرکت)
Journal : Journal of Family Business Strategy, Volume 2, Issue 1, March 2011, Pages 34–42
چکیده انگلیسی
The basic premise of this article is that the social capital elements of familiness give family firms greater potential for developing a market orientation through three basic elements: the adoption of a stewardship orientation, the development of specific capacities for knowledge management, and the development of a family based brand identity. The literature on market orientation, resource-based view, stakeholder theory and family firms is used to develop a model of market orientation in family firms. The model incorporates the specific features of familiness that influence the cultural and behavioral foundations of market orientation and mediate the relationship between these foundations and the results for the organization.
مقدمه انگلیسی
As a theory of the firm, stakeholder theory helps to establish a relational model of organizations (Pesqueux & Damak-Ayadi, 2005). It views a firm as an organizational entity through which a number of participants with diverse interests (stakeholders) achieve their goals (Yau, Chow, Sin, Tse, Luk, & Lee, 2007). A corporation can therefore be perceived as a nexus of relationships with its various stakeholders with a goal of mutual gain (Bhattacharya, Korschun, & Sen, 2009). According to Freeman (1984), the primary objective of a firm is to create superior value for relevant stakeholders in the long term. Thus, stakeholder theory claims that managers must consider the legitimate interests of groups and individuals who can affect or be affected by the activities of the firm. Stakeholder management is a question of balancing stakeholder interests and creating added value through trust, commitment and social norms (García de Madariaga and Valor, 2007, Omran et al., 2002 and Sirgy, 2002). Each stakeholder community provides material or immaterial resources that are, to a greater or lesser extent, critical to the long-term success of the firm. The ability of stakeholder communities to withdraw much-needed organizational resources gives them power over the organization. Businesses can therefore be expected to show diligence in matters of concern to powerful stakeholder communities in order to ensure their continued cooperation (Maignan & Ferrell, 2004). One of the managerial practices required to fulfill this objective is marketing, which is concerned with managing the exchange relationships that tie organizations to their environment (Zeithaml & Zeithaml, 1984). The discipline of marketing therefore involves organizational processes that are useful for keeping abreast of and managing stakeholder relationships (Kimery & Rinehart, 1998). So, the development of relationships with customers requires a firm to adopt the concept of marketing as a management philosophy. This involves identifying customer needs and satisfying them in the long term more effectively and more efficiently than the competition. This philosophy is linked to the concept of market orientation, which is central to marketing and has become increasingly important in the study and practice of management (Gebhardt, Carpenter, & Sherry, 2006). Market orientation is broadly defined as a set of superior capabilities of understanding and satisfying a firm's customers (Day, 1994). However, a strong market orientation will be a recognizable characteristic in successful firms only if they broaden their focus to include other stakeholders (e.g., employees, strategic partners and suppliers) through corporate relationships. In this sense, García de Madariaga and Valor (2007) established that the higher the degree of market orientation is, the higher the probability of implementing true dialog with stakeholders will be. On these bases, this work adopts an approach to the concept of market orientation based on stakeholder theory in a way that considers it as a source of competitive advantage supported by the social capital of the firm. In the case of family businesses, the literature includes references to family firms being inclined to behave according to a market orientation, which in turn is considered a basis of competitive advantage (e.g., Cooper et al., 2005 and Orth and Green, 2009). Poza, Hanlon, and Kishida (2004) state that a resource unique to some family firms is the capacity to create value for customers through an organizational culture that values close interpersonal relationships and fosters strategies based on high quality and high customer service. Tokarczyk, Hansen, Green, and Down (2007) suggested that the intangible resources related to the familiness of a firm may contribute to its ability to deploy a market orientation. The authors emphasized the cultural roots of market orientation, stating that this orientation could mirror the familiness qualities identified in earlier studies. The concept of familiness was first defined by Habbershon and Williams (1999) as the bundle of idiosyncratic internal resources and capabilities resulting from the involvement of the family in the firm. They were the first to apply the principles of the resource-based view to explain the competitive advantage (or disadvantage) of family firms by identifying resources specific to these firms and matching them with the firms’ strategic capabilities. Other authors have contributed to this discussion, constantly mentioning the involvement of family members with the firm and their interactions within it as the source of certain family-based attributes of family firms that create familiness (e.g. Chrisman et al., 2003, Pearson et al., 2008, Sharma, 2008, Sirmon and Hitt, 2003 and Zellweger et al., 2010). One of the most recent theoretical developments in relation to the familiness construct is the theory of social capital (Arregle et al., 2007, Hoffman et al., 2006, Pearson et al., 2008 and Sharma, 2008). On the basis of earlier literature, Arregle et al. (2007) defined social capital as the goodwill and resources made available to an actor via reciprocal, trusting relationships that can be both intra- and inter-organizational. From a stakeholder approach, social capital, in terms of trust and reciprocity norms, relation networks and relational competences, relates to various aspects of the normative vision of stakeholder management such as transparency, goodwill, and good citizenship (Ortiz-Avram and Kühne, 2008 and Putnam, 2000). Following Murillo and Lozano (2006), family firms may be especially interested in investing in social capital due to their particular dependency on the network of interpersonal relationships that determine how they function. As a result, relations with relevant stakeholders1 through specific managerial procedures may allow companies to exploit their social capital (Russo & Perrini, 2010). Arregle et al. (2007) argued that family firms are unique in this respect because they include two types of social capital: the family's and the firm's. This is because family social capital influences the creation of the firm's social capital. These authors stated that family firm members often have strong interactions with clients and other stakeholders that help to develop organizational social capital. In line with this, Sharma (2008) highlighted the importance of this type of social capital (“bridging” social capital), given the impact of family connections with critical external constituents, such as clients, on family firm performance. Family leaders are therefore considered to be specially concerned about creating customer loyalty and lasting networks with clients through a more personal approach to marketing and in-depth knowledge of customers (Miller, Le-Breton-Miller, & Scholnick, 2008). On these bases, our aim is to explain why and how some family firms are able to develop a market orientation that provides them with a competitive advantage. Thus, the basic premise of this article is that those family firms that are able to develop the attributes of distinctive familiness (Sharma, 2008) are more capable of developing a market orientation. More specifically, the objective is to discuss how elements of social capital associated with the concept of familiness affect the development and maintenance of market orientation. The discussion is based on the idea that a family firm is a business in which ownership and management are combined within a family unit and its members strive to achieve and/or maintain intra-organizational family-based relationships (Litz, 1995). This means that the family nature of a business is determined by the cultural and behavioral aspects introduced by long-term family-oriented relationships. We have therefore adopted the essence approach to the concept of family firm (Chrisman et al., 2005a, Chua et al., 1999 and Zellweger et al., 2010). Our line of argument is based on a starting point of the family firm that involves transgenerational orientation and the intention to keep the company in the family and the family in the company. These characteristics constitute the driving forces behind long-term investments to develop capacities, human resources and lasting relations with stakeholders (Le Breton-Miller & Miller, 2006). This way, one of the assumptions in our discussion is that family firms have the potential to develop certain advantages capital that could support the development of a market orientation. In the following sections, we use the literature on market orientation, resource-based view, stakeholder theory and family firms to develop a market orientation model that incorporates the specific features of the family nature of a firm, i.e. familiness. At the same time, we suggest three research propositions that can be derived from the literature discussion. The final model is presented in the last section with the main conclusions of the study and implications for further research.
نتیجه گیری انگلیسی
This article approaches the concept of market orientation in the family firm from two mainstream management theories: resource-based view and stakeholder theory. The basic assumption is that market orientation can be considered a bundle of dynamic capabilities that can foster the creation and protection of competitive advantage. Moreover, the specific characteristics of family firms in relation to social capital provide greater potential for developing a market orientation. The idiosyncratic resources associated with familiness can therefore add specific foundations to market orientation capabilities, thus promoting the capacity of family firms to sense and seize strategic opportunities and reconfigure assets in order to maintain competitiveness (Salvato, 2009 and Teece, 2007). Thus, our proposed model highlights the features of familiness that influence the cultural and behavioral foundations of market orientation and mediate the relationship between these foundations and the results (see Fig. 2). The model also specifies the elements of family that give rise to familiness (e.g., family culture, family context, and family governance). In line with this, it is important to highlight that we have assumed familiness to be a potential source of competitive advantage. However, we note that familiness can be constrictive rather than distinctive in terms of its capacity to build competitive advantage (Sharma, 2008). Thus, some family firms are not necessarily in a position to achieve their transgenerational vision, which means that family involvement can negatively affect the capacity of a firm to be market-oriented and respond to competitive challenges. In this way, dynamics such as dysfunctional conflicts between family members, asymmetric altruism, free-rider behavior, unchecked nepotism and abuses of power by some members of the family can seriously damage relations between family members and stakeholders. Moreover, numerous factors can hinder the transmission of values and knowledge from one generation to the next, due to problems associated with the succession process (Cabrera-Suárez et al., 2001 and Handler, 1990) and other potential sources of conflict. This could be detrimental to maintaining competitive advantage in terms of relations with stakeholders.