Recent strategy research is paying close attention to companies run by founders or their families (hereafter: family businesses). Family businesses differ from non-family businesses in their concentrated ownership structure. Due to the concentrated ownership, family businesses show specific decision-making processes and behaviors, for instance, that are not geared to maximize profits but to maximize the family's socio-economic wealth. A family's socio-economic wealth includes, for instance, the long-term survival of the family business as well as the reputation of the family. Against this background, we are interested in investigating the following research questions:
- In what way do family businesses have advantages or disadvantages in developing strategies to tackle grand societal challenges? And what are the underlying mechanisms?
- In what way do family businesses have advantages or disadvantages in developing and implementing innovation strategies to successfully achieve digital transformation? And what are the underlying mechanisms?
- In what way do top managers socially identify with the family business and how does the level of social identification affect strategic decisions such as the pay of CEOs? And what are the underlying mechanisms?
In answering these questions, we are interested in exploring the differences between family businesses and non-family businesses, but also in gaining greater insights into the heterogeneity of family businesses.