A Systematic Review on Conceptualizations of Preventing and Promoting Factors of Change in Family Organizations

Although family organizations are usually on the sidelines of management research, they play a significant role in local and international economies. Therefore, in the last few decades, studies have focused on the differences between these organizations and conventional ones. One of these areas of attention is researching survival and organizational changes in these organizations. Due to their dual identity (family on the one hand and business on the other), family organizations face different change issues and have distinct characteristics that can prevent or promote changes.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

Previous research has addressed many issues and research questions about the different aspects of experiencing organizational change in family organizations. Specifically, the main research topics include the person-centered behaviors of the founders (such as their leadership style and entrepreneurial behaviors) alongside the specific features of these organizations (such as cultural differences). Another main focus of the literature has been explaining the distinct nature of family organizations, resulting in a middle-range theory about the dualistic nature of their identity, namely, the socioemotional wealth theory. Socioemotional wealth refers to financial aspects of the firm that meet the family's affective needs, such as identity, the ability to exercise family influence, and the perpetuation of the family dynasty. However, what is lacking in the literature is a more comprehensive look at how family organizations experience organizational changes. To answer this question, secondary data analysis, i.e., how previous studies have conceptualized organizational changes and its promoting and preventing factors in family organizations, would be a suitable path.

The current study tried to answer the research question by systematically reviewing the literature from 2000 to 2020. Unlike traditional narrative review, systematic review is repeatable and transparent. It provides a structured and documented approach to the literature selection and review process to reduce review bias. We followed the procedures and recommendations of some authoritative articles to conduct this review. Accordingly, the first step was determining clear and specific questions at the beginning of the study: “What approaches and theories are used in the conceptualization of change in family organizations?” and “What are the factors that promote or prevent change in family organizations?” The next step was doing an initial search and identifying related articles in 5 online databases (Google Scholar, Sage Publications, Science Direct, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley). We used two categories of keywords and logical operators (AND, OR) to perform the search. The search was conducted in September 2020 and only among sources published in English between 2000 and 2020. For the selection of articles, we set some inclusion and exclusion criteria, such as “the study should be empirical and being published in a peer-reviewed journal,” which were applied through software-aided control, referring to related sites, and reviewing the abstracts of the articles. By the end, 81 final articles were selected for this review. To extract data, we created an Excel file with columns related to the general characteristics of the articles and our research questions. During a back-and-forth process between the researchers, we negotiated and finally agreed upon the extracted information. Since the data and methods of the reviewed articles were heterogeneous, we combined the findings in this study qualitatively. To do so, the final articles were entered into ATLAS.ti (version 8) software for content analyzing and coding and their information was combined into three main themes: the approach or theory used for conceptualizing the change and its promoting and preventing factors.

This study was to summarize the findings of past studies and provide a more general picture of change and transformation in family organizations. Specifically, this research aimed to answer two main questions: “What approaches and theories are used in the conceptualization of change in family organizations?” and “What are the factors promoting and preventing change in family organizations?” Regarding the first question, the finding of this study is that change in family organizations is mainly conceptualized around five main perspectives: succession, entrepreneurship, sustainable business development, socio-emotional wealth, and organizational culture. As for the second question, reviewing articles shows that factors preventing and promoting change in family organizations are not far from these topics. For example, one factor that drives change in family organizations is the existence of an entrepreneurial culture and the existence of an entrepreneurial leader and founder. Also, the existence of a suitable substitute and non-family expert staff are factors that lead to change. This means that change in family organizations mainly happens either through an internal factor (i.e., entrepreneurial culture) or an external factor (i.e., the presence of non-family experts). These two observations show two main strategies to facilitate change in family organizations that can be used by managers or change consultants. The same pattern is observed among preventing factors. The existence of non-professional managers, traditional attitudes towards organization management, and nepotism have been among the preventing factors. This means that if the organizational culture of a family organization is institutionalized in the form of anti-change norms such as nepotism or authoritarian leadership, it would be one of the biggest obstacles to change. In such a case, managers or change consultants can facilitate changes in these organizations by making cultural interventions such as organizational confrontation meetings.

CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

By categorizing and combining theories/approaches to the conceptualization of change and its preventing and promoting factors in family organizations, this study paves the way for developing a change management model in family organizations. For this purpose, this study has categorized all the obtained preventing and promoting factors into five capabilities: adaptability, human capital, generational transition, manager/s, and change management. This means that those factors that help to create these five capabilities are the promoting factors, and those that weaken these capabilities are the factors that prevent change in these organizations. Based on this classification, future studies can conduct research on how to measure and mature these capabilities in family organizations and provide a model for promoting and successfully managing changes in family organizations.