Shifting Socioemotional Wealth Prioritization During a Crisis
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Shifting socioemotional wealth prioritization during a crisis A content analysis of statements to shareholders of family businesses MASTER THESIS WITHIN: Business Administration NUMBER OF CREDITS: 30 ECTS PROGRAMME OF STUDY: Global Management AUTHORS: Stella Alice Gisela Heuer & Lajos Szabó TUTOR: Tommaso Minola JÖNKÖPING May 2021 Master Thesis in Business Administration Title: Shifting socioemotional wealth prioritization during a crisis: A content analysis of statements to shareholders of family businesses Authors: Stella Alice Gisela Heuer and Lajos Szabó Tutor: Tommaso Minola Date: 2021-05-24 Key terms: Family business, socioemotional wealth, FIBER, COVID-19, content analysis, Sweden, Germany Abstract Family businesses are generally considered to be the most prevalent form of business around the world. They have also been shown to differ from their non-family counterparts due the non- economic factors that influence their decision-making. One of the most widely used conceptualization of these factors concerns the controlling family’s socioemotional endowment or in other words, the family’s socioemotional wealth. Newer approaches have proposed that socioemotional wealth can not only be broken down into several component dimensions, but that these dimensions may shift in prioritization in response to different contingencies. The sudden spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and the global crisis that has followed in its wake is one such contingency, impacting economies and family firms virtually everywhere in the world. Studying the crisis’ effects on family firms has thus already been outlined as a major focus of research going forward. This paper aims to develop the concept of socioemotional wealth as a dynamic construct and study the crisis’ effects on family firms. We conduct a content analysis of 20 Swedish and 20 German publicly listed family firms’ statements to shareholders published over a three-year period coinciding with the emergence of the crisis. Thus, this research presents an empirical look at how family firms in the contexts of two differing governmental responses to the crisis prioritized the different dimensions of their socioemotional wealth. The results show the families’ emotional attachment coming to the forefront in both cases, with no significant difference between the two countries’ family firms. Furthermore, we observe the families’ socioemotional ties to their employees retain their pre-crisis prevalence as the most prioritized dimension. This is accompanied by a deepening of the quality of the communication tied to this dimension of socioemotional wealth with it coming to reflect the emerging solidarity and cultural changes resulting from the crisis. The results suggest that family firms may respond to a crisis on the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic through their decision-making being increasingly influenced by their emotional attachment to the firm, while also retaining a focus on preserving strong social ties to their employees to persevere through the difficult period. i Acknowledgements We would like to give our gratitude to our supervisor, Tommaso Minola, for his unyielding support and valuable feedback during the writing of this thesis. His comments helped guide our research tremendously. We would also like to give a warm thank you to our peers in our thesis group for the insightful discussions and keen observations. We further thank Jordan-Dawn De Laender, Antonia Focke, Abdimajid Khayre and Jan Niklas Schmänk for their contributions in improving our work with their detailed comments and assessments as part of our monthly seminars. ii Table of Contents List of Abbreviations ............................................................................. v List of Figures ...................................................................................... vi List of Tables ....................................................................................... vi List of Appendices ............................................................................... vi 1 Introduction ........................................................................... 1 1.1 Background ............................................................................................ 1 1.2 Research Problem ................................................................................. 2 1.3 Research Purpose and Research Questions ......................................... 4 2 Theoretical Background ....................................................... 5 2.1 Literature Review Procedure.................................................................. 5 2.2 Family Businesses ................................................................................. 6 2.3 Socioemotional Wealth .......................................................................... 8 2.4 FIBER .................................................................................................... 9 2.5 Crises in Family Businesses ................................................................ 14 2.5.1 Crisis Management in Family Businesses............................................ 14 2.5.2 COVID-19 ............................................................................................ 15 2.5.3 Government Responses to COVID-19: Sweden and Germany ........... 16 2.6 Propositions and Model Construction .................................................. 19 3 Methodology ........................................................................ 27 3.1 Research Philosophy ........................................................................... 27 3.2 Research Approach ............................................................................. 29 3.3 Research Strategy ............................................................................... 30 3.4 Sample Selection and Data Collection ................................................. 34 3.5 Data Analysis Procedure...................................................................... 37 3.6 Research Quality ................................................................................. 38 3.7 Research Ethics ................................................................................... 39 4 Findings and Data Analysis ............................................... 41 4.1 Description of Empirical Data ............................................................... 41 4.2 Descriptive Statistics ............................................................................ 45 4.3 Statistical Analysis ............................................................................... 50 4.4 Summary and Comparison with Prior Research .................................. 53 4.4.1 Summary of Findings ........................................................................... 53 4.4.2 Ability Dimensions “F” and “R” ............................................................. 54 4.4.3 Willingness Dimensions “I”, “B” and “E” ............................................... 57 4.4.4 Answering the Research Questions ..................................................... 64 5 Discussion ........................................................................... 66 5.1 Discussion of Findings ......................................................................... 66 5.2 Contribution and Implications ............................................................... 67 5.3 Limitations ............................................................................................ 70 5.3.1 Limitations of Theoretical Background ................................................. 70 5.3.2 Limitations of Research Design ........................................................... 71 5.3.3 Limitations of Data Set ......................................................................... 72 5.3.4 Limitations of Data Analysis ................................................................. 73 5.4 Future Research .................................................................................. 73 iii 6 Conclusion ........................................................................... 76 7 Reference List...................................................................... 78 8 Appendices .......................................................................... 85 iv List of Abbreviations B – The socioemotional wealth dimension of binding social ties COVID-19 – Coronavirus disease 2019 E – The socioemotional wealth dimension of emotional attachment EC – European Commission F – The socioemotional wealth dimension of family control and influence I – The socioemotional wealth dimension of identification with the firm on the family member’s side OxCGRT – Oxford COVID-19 government response tracker R – The socioemotional wealth dimension of renewal of family bonds to the firm achieved by way of dynastic succession SEW – Socioemotional wealth WHO – World Health Organisation v List of Figures Figure 1: FIBER and its conditional inferences ....................................................... 11 Figure 2: SEW crisis model .................................................................................... 20 Figure 3: Research onion ........................................................................................ 30 Figure 4: Descriptive statistics – year founded and number of employees ............... 41 Figure 5: Descriptive statistics – revenues in million EUR ...................................... 42 Figure 6: Descriptive statistics – sectors and family voting rights ........................... 42 Figure 7: