Rafaela Gjergji

ESG practices offer various benefits for family firms; however, there has been limited focus on how these practices can specifically advantage the owning family. To address this gap, we conduct a multiple-case study of six Italian family firms. Responding to recent calls for research (Stock et al., 2024) and building on the growing literature on ESG in family business, we adopt the family as the primary unit of analysis and investigate the outcomes that the owning family derives from the firm's ESG practices. Our findings reveal that engagement in ESG fosters a set of interrelated, family-level outcomes. We conceptualize these outcomes as Continuity, Alignment, Relationships, and Ethics (summarized as C.A.R.E.), four concepts that are reinforced, nurtured, and developed through sustained ESG engagement. These concepts together function as key intangible resources that contribute to the long-term success of family businesses.

This study investigates how successors, by acting entrepreneurially, contribute to family firm transgenerational value creation. By focusing on the transgenerational value creation process, we investigate transgenerational entrepreneurship in family businesses under successor leadership. Employing a multiple case study approach, we analyse 15 Italian family firms, based on direct interviews, follow-ups, field observations, and approximately 300 historical documents spanning the period 1894 to 2023. Our findings reveal how individual, contextual, business, and familial drivers, alone or in combination, point to various pathways influencing entrepreneurial outcomes, thereby reflecting the diverse forms of successor entrepreneurship. Specifically, we develop a taxonomy comprising five entrepreneurial profiles: revolutioner, orchestrator, venturer, renewer, and improver. Our findings offer novel insights into the family business and entrepreneurship literature, along with practical implications and potential contributions to regional development.

Despite significant growth in strategic management literature, research on firm-level capabilities in family business remains fragmented. This paper aims to consolidate this field by comprehensively examining ordinary and dynamic capabilities in family firms. Drawing on the theoretical foundations of the resource-based view and dynamic capability theories, we conducted a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies, including 76 journal ar ticles, spanning a period of more than 20 years. The study proposes a framework that systematizes the literature, outlining main drivers (e.g., family influence and other factors), types of capabilities (ordinary and dynamic), and related outcomes (competitive, financial, and non-financial). The review emphasizes the critical role of family influence—in terms of family business status and family involvement—in shaping capability development and highlights the importance of family behavioral dynamics, including familiness and socioemotional wealth. Finally, the study identifies gaps in existing literature and proposes research questions to guide future research.

The paper investigates how the non-economic goals of the current CEOs affect innovation in family firms. A qualitative in-depth multiple case study of four family firms is carried out, in which the current CEOs' non-economic goals are identified by direct interviews with the current CEOs themselves and with the members who managed the company before them (i.e., the predecessors). As a main result, the paper proposes a theoretical framework which explains the relationships between goals and innovation by identifying a series of managerial levers activated because of the peculiarity of the current CEOs' non-economic goals.

This paper investigates whether and to what extent strategy disclosure influences the cost of capital, comparing family and non-family firms and considering the proportion of women directors. We theorize that voluntary strategy disclosure may be either beneficial or detrimental depending on the perceptions by financial stakeholders about the role of governance attributes. These stakeholders might, indeed, assess strategy disclosure differently based on their stereotyped view of the family firm status and women’s involvement on the board of directors. By referring to a sample of 93 listed Italian small and medium-sized enterprises, we show that, unlike with their non-family counterparts, strategy disclosure increases the cost of capital for family firms. However, an increasing proportion of women directors softens this negative effect. Moreover, when a critical mass of women directors is appointed to the board, the strategy disclosure becomes beneficial for family firms too. We consequently offer a threefold contribution to the literature on gender diversity, family business and corporate voluntary disclosure.

Purpose The present paper aims at exploring effective business model adaptations in response to unexpected events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach The authors test the effect of two major business model adaptations, namely changes in the value proposition and changes in the target market, on a sample of 96 family SMEs. Findings Results show that only changes in the value proposition had a positive and significant impact on performance, helping family SMEs to better confront COVID-19. However, this effect is reduced in the case of target market change. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate how business model adaptations in family SMEs affect performance in crisis situations.

Building on agency and resource-based view theories, this study investigates the level of environmental disclosure (ED) practices of family versus non-family firms and ex- plores the moderating role of board gender diversity. We test our hypotheses on a 3-year (2018–2020) panel data sample comprising 324 observations of Italian small- and medium-sized enterprises traded on the Euronext Growth Milan. Findings show that, compared to non-family firms, companies with a family firm status are character- ized by lower levels of ED. Gender diversity on the board, however, moderates this relationship, reducing this gap, to the extent that the family firm status is associated with higher ED when the number of women directors is high enough to constitute a critical mass. We consequently contribute to the studies on family business, corporate governance, and corporate social responsibility.

Through a survey addressed to family firms in Northern Italy, we investigate the antecedents and the different outcomes of entrepreneurial behaviour (EB) in family firms. We test a model that determines how factors such as non-economic goals/socioemotional wealth (SEW) dimensions of family managers influence EB and how EB, in turn, affects open innovation choices (i.e., breadth) and innovation performance. We assess the interplay among these variables by means of a structural equation modelling (SEM) model. As concerns the antecedents of EB, findings show a positive influence of the SEW dimensions 'identification with the firm' and 'binding social ties', whereas a negative influence emerges regarding 'emotional attachment among family members'. Moreover, EB enhances openness breadth, and this, in turn, acting as a mediator of the relationship between EB and innovation performance, fosters explorative results.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure has become a critical component of corporate reporting. However, the effectiveness of this type of disclosure remains poorly explored among small and medium enterprises (SMEs), despite the fact that these businesses represent the majority of firms around the world. By leveraging on a dataset of Italian listed SMEs, we fill this gap to shed new light on the effects of nonfinancial disclosure on the cost of capital. The study reveals that, in stark contrast with the evidence on large companies, environmental disclosure for SMEs is bound to provoke an increase in the cost of capital. Yet this pattern is capsized when the company is a family SME, as it benefits from environmental disclosure, as large companies do.