Entrepreneurial habitus and nudging at multi-generational family firms

  • Steven Arthur Gaklis

Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis

Abstract

Parent family firms engage in corporate venturing (CV) as a strategy for renewal and competitive advantage. As part of the venturing process, they provide organisational sponsorship to imbue capital and resources to their new ventures. For this study, I investigated seven parent family firms and their new ventures in order to generate a set of research questions that outline a framework for discussion and analysis. Given the exploratory nature of my research, I adopted an abductive multiple case study method at five parent family firms with family ventures and two parent family firms with non-family ventures. At each parent family firm I created case histories, data tables and event histories while also performing open coding and selective coding of data to provide within-case and cross-case analyses in order to reveal patterns in the data. Finally, I created a visual representation of the propositions in a model of a more nuanced theory of organizational sponsorship in the context of new business incubation among parent family firms.;In this study I explored paradigms of paternalism, patronage and sponsorship to show that parent family firms imbued their new ventures with dispositions and resources. I propose that over generations parent family firms imbue long-lasting, transposable and entrepreneurial dispositions while gently steering only family ventures toward available opportunities and resources. Parent family firms put opportunities and strategic resources in entrepreneurial capital within 'easy reach' and 'full view', allowing family ventures to more easily overcome a liability of newness and acquire legitimacy by choosing what is best in order to achieve power over their individual fields.
Date of Award31 Jan 2020
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • University Of Strathclyde
SupervisorSara Carter (Supervisor) & Jonathan Levie (Supervisor)

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