شرکت های تولیدی کوچک و متوسط خانوادگی و نوآوری: مقایسه بین جانشینی خانوادگی و تصاحب خارجی

The purpose of this article is to compare within-family successions and external-party takeovers in family-owned manufacturing SMEs to determine potential differences in how they are perceived and managed. This paper focuses on two long-term aspects of family businesses – their succession and their ability to innovate – defining innovativeness as an aspect of organisational culture. Based on ten case studies, the paper concludes that the values related to a firm's context, influenced by the divesting party as well as by the choice of successor, create inertia, to the extent that only minor changes in innovation orientation are possible. External owners may focus to a greater extent on growth and new ways of innovating, while family-succeeded firms diversify so as not to abandon previous businesses. Intermediating factors, such as customer involvement, type of SME, and the acquirers’ motives, influence the innovative organisational culture and create explanatory links to innovation intensity and methodologies of innovation.

Many companies are run as family businesses (Melin & Nordqvist, 2007), and as such, the companies come to be affected by that context, which includes how the family influences the business and the small size of the company. Most family-owned businesses are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (i.e., the companies have less than 250 employees and a turnover of less than 50 million euro, or, as an alternative to the turnover criterion, the total assets carry a booked value below 43 million euro; European Commission, 2009) throughout their entire lifetime, which often extends across generations. These companies contribute significantly to the economies of many countries (Ljung, 2010). To remain in business, just like any other business, these companies need to update their product range, improve production processes, and occasionally diversify their businesses into new fields. Consequently, these companies need to remain innovative. At the same time, family-owned firms may be underpinned by values specific to them, and these values may affect their tendency to make important changes (Habbershon, Nordqvist, & Zellweger, 2010). Recently, attention has been paid to the many family-owned firms that need to find new owners (Linder, 2005 and Melin et al., 2004) when it is not certain that they will be sourced from within the family. Instead, options such as management buy-ins, buyouts and acquisitions by external parties that do not seek to take an active part in the execution work of the company may follow (Howorth, Westhead, & Wright, 2004). The succession choice may have a great impact on the long-term development of the company, wherein the type of succession may lead to changes in the values that underpin the company. Those values, in turn, include areas such as the innovativeness. This paper defines innovativeness as an aspect of organisational culture (Hurley & Hult, 1998) and focuses on how innovativeness is handled in the succession of a family-owned SME. The paper specifically addresses whether and how innovativeness is affected by a family-succession or an external party takeover of a firm, with an empirical focus on manufacturing SMEs (SMMEs). The purpose of this article is to compare within-family successions and external party takeovers in family-owned manufacturing SMEs to determine potential differences in how they are perceived and managed. The article focuses, therefore, on two long-term aspects of family businesses: their succession and their ability to innovate (Lumpkin et al., 2010 and Steier and Miller, 2010). Through a logical combination of research on succession in family firms and innovation management, the article develops propositions that are then tested using a sample of five within-family succeeded SMMEs and five family SMMEs that were taken over by external parties (Eisenhardt, 1991). The cases are then used to develop new ideas that the current literature has not yet sufficiently addressed (Siggelkow, 2007). Much research into family business succession deals with the processes of the transaction and integration phases (Ragozzino and Reuer, 2007 and Scholes et al., 2007), or it discusses the characteristics specific to family succession (family and business, legal, finance and tax issues, practical approaches to the succession, and other barriers) (Ip & Jacobs, 2006). Less is known about what happens following the succession, as well as the ways in which this phase differs if the company is taken over by an external party. In the related literature on innovations in acquisitions, scholars have generally focused on scenarios in which a large company takes over a small, innovative one (Ahuja and Katila, 2001 and Lengnick-Hall, 1992) and in which the acquired party is usually seemingly newly established (Boeker and Karichalil, 2002, Christensen, 2006 and Fillion, 1966). Overall, the literature on acquisitions involving small firms is limited, although it is a frequent practice (Hussinger, 2010). The remainder of the article is structured as follows. The next section outlines the theoretical point of departure: succession and take-over of family-businesses, innovativeness as an aspect of organisational culture, and how innovativeness could be expected to be handled in the case of such successions. The following section covers methodology. The article is based on ten cases of successions in family-owned SMMEs, five of which were taken over by family members, while the rest were acquired by external parties. These successions are briefly described. In the findings section, the ten cases are analysed in terms of innovation type, innovation intensity, and change. Research propositions are discussed in relation to the cases. The article ends with conclusions, managerial implications, limitations and ideas for future research.

5.1. The implications for theory development This article compared within-family succession and external party takeovers in family-owned manufacturing SMEs in order to determine potential differences in how innovativeness is perceived and managed. The article contributes to the research on succession in family-owned firms and the takeover of SMEs through an exploration of how the innovativeness of such firms is viewed and handled in the succession. Previous research (e.g., Habbershon et al., 2010 and Melin et al., 2007) on family-owned businesses has concentrated mainly on how family issues are dealt with, while this paper points to two of the important engines for keeping a company progressing in the long-term: its ability to innovate and its succession. Furthermore, the study compares this to various forms of external company takeovers of family-owned firms, where previously, literature in this area tends to focus on large firms and less is known about how the process affects small firms when they remain small. It can be concluded that, regardless of whether the SME is succeeded to a family member or to an external owner, its innovativeness focuses largely on within-frame (Verhees & Meulenberg, 2004), incremental innovativeness (O’Reilly & Tushman, 2008). The innovation intensity is low and the succession provides only minor changes in the innovation orientation (if any at all). This can partly be explained by how the companies were and remained SMEs following the successions, how they were marked by the ways in which the organisational values of the company influence its future and its contextual embeddedness, and how the previous owner seems to choose a successor based on a continuity of existing values. From the analysis, it can be concluded that any statement such as “ownership change type A will lead to view B on innovativeness” is futile. Although the present study indicates that external owners may, to a greater extent, develop within new frames and also have a more outspoken focus on change in terms of growth, the findings from this research indicate that the attitude towards and management of innovativeness cannot simply be related to the type of new owner, nor can these aspects be fully understood from the process by which the ownership is transferred. Rather, there are a number of contextual aspects that need to be considered and understood, including those values that are transferred through the choice of successor, acquiring parties’ motivations, the continuity or loss of customers, the process or product innovation focus of firms, and their businesses as SMEs in established industry structures. The article also describes how organisational values are embedded in interactions and ownership structures that affect the company and the attitude towards and management of innovation beyond its succession. The loss of such parties as customers may intensify the need to manage innovations differently, while a previous owner continues to affect the attitude towards and management of innovativeness following his or her divesture. The article's contribution to the research on family businesses includes its emphasis on the ways in which contextual issues impact the values of a firm. Values are transmitted through previous owners, expectations, and the industrial context of the firms, and they reveal the relevance of discussing innovations in firms that may be destined to remain SMEs (cf. Storey & Greene, 2010). This emphasis is further relevant for innovation management research, to further explore how organisational culture affects the development of firms. The issue of a customer's complementing a firm's innovation orientation by being more focused on radical innovations while the firm is preoccupied with incremental ones provides a further contribution to the literature on innovation. Innovativeness as an inherited company value is another area that provides some new research directions for studies on organisational culture. In the literature on acquisitions, culture is often studied in terms of its effects on integration, while this paper addresses the ways in which culture needs to be understood as a transferred set of values from the divesting party to the new owners. 5.2. Implications for practice This article presents the potential difficulties of re-orienting a family-owned SMME following its succession and also shows that innovativeness has been given limited attention on the part of companies in the choice of successor. For successors, it would be important to consider how the previous owner continues to influence the direction of the firm, as well as what contextual obstacles may influence its further development. For those handing over family-businesses to new generations or to external owners, the innovativeness of the firm, as such, would need to be given more attention in their choice of successor. The significance of this finding would not be to simply keep things as before, but rather to ensure that the business remains healthy in the long term. This awareness is important not only to the families that own the businesses, but also to the advisors and small-scale investors who are interested in acquiring a family-owned SME. The creation of organisational values that foster innovativeness would, as suggested in the literature, include such elements as freedom, risk-taking, and the ability by its participants to de-learn (Amabile et al., 1996 and Garud et al., 1997). The selection of a management team that promotes such ideas as well as the recruitment of staff that represents different skills and orientations (heterogeneity) would help to shape an organisation that is better equipped to reinvent itself. It may be a long-term process to change the organisational values of a company, and a succession may well establish an important breaking point between the present and future ways of innovating. Therefore, successions should be considered to be opportunities to change existing values if they are not healthy for the company's long-term operations. 5.3. Limitations and future research suggestions This article is based on a limited number of cases, and the case companies all function in the same region of Sweden. As a single-region, single-country study, response biases can be expected, and these affect the generalisability of the findings. The limited number of cases also constrains such generalisability. Further case studies are needed in which larger samples on various types of new owners should be included, along with data from other countries and regions. This article introduces research on innovativeness in succession in family-owned SMEs. Because many firms are both SMEs and family owned, and each of these at one point or another will need to succeed its ownership, a field of research has been identified that is in need of further study. With the present study targeting manufacturing and small firms, it would be of interest to conduct comparative studies with service organisations and with large family firms. In addition, further in-depth analyses to explore how succeeded family-owned SMEs treat innovativeness and company rebuilding in the long-term would be of interest. Future research may focus on which organisational values are of particular importance when shaping an innovative organisational climate in a family-owned SME, how an organisational culture differs from the creative organisation as described in previous research, how the owner and/or management roles affect innovativeness in SMEs, and action-research-related studies that focus on implementing values and organisational structures to better promote innovativeness. In summary, this article shows the ways in which attitudes towards and the management of innovativeness largely remain focused on incremental innovations in established frames following the succession of the firms. This finding is applicable regardless of whether the SME is succeeded to a family member or an external party. The findings show the importance of considering the contextual embeddedness in studies on family businesses, succession, SMEs and innovation management. It also underscores innovativeness in terms of innovation intensity, newness, methods and outcomes as important values to consider in the analysis of family firms. Studies that take a combined approach of innovativeness and family businesses constitute an important area for further research, especially because such studies highlight the long-term development of family-owned firms.