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The Effect of Family Involvement on Innovation Outcomes: The Moderating Role of Board Social Capital
Author(s) -
Bendig David,
Foege J. Nils,
Endriß Stefan,
Brettel Malte
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of product innovation management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.646
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1540-5885
pISSN - 0737-6782
DOI - 10.1111/jpim.12522
Subject(s) - socioemotional selectivity theory , contingency , social capital , relevance (law) , business , product (mathematics) , industrial organization , marketing , sociology , psychology , social science , developmental psychology , linguistics , philosophy , geometry , mathematics , political science , law
Innovation is an essential and yet puzzling part of family firms’ strategic focus. While family firms are generally characterized as conservative regarding their research and development (R&D) activities, researchers have recently argued that family firms can still achieve innovation‐based competitive advantages. Seeking to understand the link between family influence and the outcomes of innovation, we suggest that it is necessary not only to observe the depth of family involvement, but also to differentiate between technological inventions and market innovations. We further posit that the board members’ social capital constitutes an important contingency for this link. We, therefore, investigate the relationship between family involvement and two different outcomes: the number of the firm’s inventions and the market relevance of innovations. Our analysis of S&P 500 firms comprises 1.85 million patents and manual evaluations of 1774 product announcements. The results of our estimations suggest that family involvement is negatively related to the number of inventions and positively related to the market relevance of innovations. They further show that internal and external board social capital moderate the relationship between family involvement and the number of inventions. This study adds to the discussion about family firm innovation by using socioemotional wealth to explain heterogeneity in innovation patterns and revealing that relational resources derived from board social capital are crucial boundary conditions for families’ influence on technological inventions. Taken together, it works toward a more holistic view of innovation in family‐influenced firms.