The Organizational Form of Family Business

ISBN-13: 9780792379393 / Angielski / Twarda / 2000 / 186 str.

Stefan P. Bornheim; Stefan Bornhiem

Opis

The Organizational Form of Family Business attempts to develop an evolutionary family business theory, positioning family businesses as a distinct organizational form (based on conjectures from organizational ecology). An open and uninhibited playing field - achieved through utilizing a grounded theory methodology - heightens chances for observing precisely how family businesses behave.
An introductory chapter is followed by a literature review, beginning with a review of family business research. This is followed by a discussion of family business definitional issues, and accompanied by some data to show the economic importance of family business.
There follows a review of the research literature on grounded theory, its developments, and its epistemological and ontological assumptions in the light of contemporary philosophy of science. A literature review and historical outline of organizational ecology including the theoretical achievements is provided. Also, the comparison with the other main organizational theories, justifying the theory selection, is offered.

Spis treści

1. Introduction.- 1.1 Family Business.- 1.2 Grounded Theory.- 1.3 Organizational Ecology.- 1.4 The General Scope of this Research.- 1.5 Outlook.- 2. Literature Review.- 2.1 Family Business.- 2.1.1 Definitional issues.- 2.1.2 Statistics.- 2.1.3 Succession.- 2.1.4 International family business research.- 2.1.5 Entrepreneurship links.- 2.1.6 Strategy.- 2.1.7 Organizational behavior.- 2.1.8 Questions unanswered.- 2.2 Grounded Theory.- 2.2.1 Basic considerations.- 2.2.2 Some thoughts on the qualitative/quantitative dichotomy.- 2.2.3 Grounded theory in contrast to other methodological approaches.- 2.2.3.1 The inherent characteristics of qualitative research.- 2.2.3.2 The benefits of grounded theory.- 2.2.3.3 Triangulation.- 2.2.3.4 The use of cases and case studies.- 2.2.4 The hard core vs. the periphery.- 2.2.5 Some more philosophy of science.- 2.2.5.1 Sir Karl R. Popper.- 2.2.5.2 Thomas S. Kuhn.- 2.2.5.3 Paul K. Feyerabend.- 2.3 Organizational Ecology.- 2.3.1 Central themes.- 2.3.1.1 Adaptation and selection.- 2.3.1.2 Density dependence.- 2.3.1.3 Organizational foundings.- 2.3.1.4 Organizational mortality.- 2.3.1.5 Further categories of ecological research.- 2.3.2 Questions remaining.- 2.3.3 The fit of grounded theory and organizational ecology.- 2.4 The European Union.- 2.4.1 The institution and process of the European Union.- 2.4.2 Chronology of the Union.- 2.4.3 The history of the Union.- 2.4.4 The evolution of the European Union.- 2.4.5 The democratic foundations of the European Union.- 2.4.6 The single market in 1995.- 2.4.7 Small and medium-sized enterprises in the European Union.- 2.5 A Summary of Implications for this Research.- 3. Methodology.- 3.1 Formal Description.- 3.1.1 The procedure.- 3.1.2 The cases.- 3.2 Basic Grounded Theory Procedures.- 3.2.1 Theoretical sensitivity.- 3.2.2 The use of literature.- 3.2.3 Coding procedures in grounded theory.- 3.2.3.1 Open coding.- 3.2.3.2 Axial coding.- 3.2.3.3 Selective coding.- 3.3 The secondary data.- 3.3.1 The Interstratos project.- 3.3.2 The questionnaire.- 3.3.3 The data.- 3.3.4 Statistical techniques.- 3.3.5 Testing for assumption violations.- 3.3.5.1 Heteroskedasticity.- 3.3.5.2 Multi-Collinearity.- 3.3.6 Statistical procedures.- 3.4 The Utilization of Grounded Theory and Ecological Conjectures in Family Business.- 4. Results.- 4.1 Presentation of Cases.- 4.1.1 Austria (case A).- 4.1.2 Denmark (case D).- 4.1.3 Germany.- 4.1.3.1 Case G1.- 4.1.3.2 Case G2.- 4.1.3.3 Case G3.- 4.1.4 Sweden (case S1).- 4.1.5 Switzerland (case S2).- 4.2 The Model.- 4.3 The Core Elements as Found Embedded in the Case Data.- 4.4 The Statistical Analysis of the Interstratos Data.- 4.4.1 The hypotheses.- 4.4.2 Variables and proxy constructs.- 4.4.2.1 Hypotheses concerning the individual core elements.- 4.4.2.2 Hypotheses concerning the whole core model.- 4.4.3 Descriptive data set information.- 4.4.4 Results and presentation of the statistical analysis.- 4.4.4.1 1991 (IS91).- 4.4.4.2 1992 (IS92).- 4.4.4.3 1993 (IS93).- 4.4.4.4 1994 (IS94).- 4.4.4.5 1995 (IS95).- 4.4.4.6 Summary of significant results.- 5. Discussion.- 5.1 The Refined Model.- 5.1.1 Simplicity.- 5.1.2 Focus on core business.- 5.1.3 Dedication, enthusiasm and belief.- 5.1.4 Values and principles.- 5.1.5 Incentives and rewards.- 5.2 Validation of the Refined Model Through Interstratos.- 5.3 Caveats.- 5.4 Future Research.- 5.5 Summary and Concluding Questions.- 6. Bibliography.