Transgenerational entrepreneurship in family firms: a configurational approach

The aim of this research is to understand why some family firms perform better than others. To do so different configurations are identified based on familiness resources such as human, social, and financial capital, as well as the degree of entrepreneurial orientation that are considered to impact family firms’ performance and transgenerational survival. We test our theoretical contention on a sample of 1,344 family firms from 21 countries through fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. Our main findings suggest that there are several configurations of resources and entrepreneurial orientation that increase the level of family firm performance. In three out of the seven main configurations, family firm specific resources alone lead to better financial performance, while the other four rely on entrepreneurial orientation combined with family firm specific resources. All identified configurations relate to different degrees of family involvement and thus emphasize the heterogeneity of family firms and their paths to financial performance.