Abstract
The thesis presents a collection of four papers that comprises a systematic literature review on family firms and OI and three empirical-quantitative papers on topics related to family firms' innovation and OI behavior respectively. Specifically, the thesis focusses on the antecedents of family firms' heterogeneity grouped among three dimensions, family governance structure, goals and resources. Each paper, leveraging on these dimensions, identifies specific family-related factors both in terms of governance (e.g. family management and different generations' involvement), goals (e.g. non-economic goals) and resources (e.g. human and social capital) as determinants of firms' distinctive behavior, and examines the impact of the identified factors on innovation and OI in family firms. Results show that, depending on each non-economic goal/SEW dimension as well as the degree of family members involved in the management, different generations' involvement and also the professionalization (i.e. number of external managers) of the firm, family firms' behavior toward innovation and open innovation differ. Contributions of the study, limitations and future research agenda conclude the thesis.