How does family capital influence the resilience of family firms?

Imen Mzid (), Nada Khachlouf () and Richard Soparnot ()
Additional contact information
Imen Mzid: IHEC Sfax
Nada Khachlouf: ICD Business School Paris
Richard Soparnot: Group ESC Clermont

Journal of International Entrepreneurship, 2019, vol. 17, issue 2, No 5, 249-277

Abstract: Abstract How does being a family business contribute to resilience in a turbulent business environment? We draw on the Sustainable Family Business Theory (SFBT) to highlight the role of family capital (human, social, and financial capital) in the resilience of a sample of family firms. We collected data through semi-structured interviews with managers of four Tunisian family firms after the political revolution between 2011 and 2014, which triggered economic instability and business discontinuities. Organizational agility and resilience consequently became vital. We find that social capital of family firms, which may be composed of local and/or international contacts, contributes the most to firms’ ability to absorb shocks, reallocate existing resources, and internalize practices that allow firms to cope with future disturbances. We also find that financial capital is largely determined by social capital and human capital of family firms. Our research contributes to the family business resilience literature by showing how developing resilience at an individual level (social capital) fosters organizational level (family business) resilience. The interactions between the three dimensions of social capital are particularly interesting for sustainable family business theorists. We show that financial capital mediates the impact of human and social capital in order to strengthen firms’ resilience. Our research also has implications for the international entrepreneurship literature: we found that international contacts provide family businesses in crisis with strong social support together with access to strategic opportunities at the local level. Future research could focus on the direct and indirect impacts of several dimensions of family capital in order to test which configuration of family capital leads to the greatest resilience. Studies could also further explore the impact of the network of international contacts in the strategic renewal of resilient family firms by identifying international opportunities.

Keywords: Organizational resilience; Political transition; Family business; Family capital; Qualitative methods; Résilience organisationnelle; Transition politique; Enterprise familiale; Capital familial; Méthodes qualitatives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10843-018-0226-7

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