Relationship between Entrepreneurship and Family Businesses

The significant contribution of family businesses to the world economic forces has attracted many researchers such as Handler (1989), Daily and Dollinger (1993), Litz (1995), Degadt (2003) and Uhlaner (2006). Some multinational family firms such as Heineken have been started up with entrepreneurial ideas. The relationship between entrepreneurship and family businesses is a main theme of study for some researchers such as Litz and Kleysen (2002), Chrisman, Chua and Steier (2003), Salvato (2004), Wah (2004) and Naldi, Nordqvist, Sjoberg and Wiklund (2007).
This study aims to investigate and examine the relationship between entrepreneurship and family businesses. There are some relations between entrepreneurship and family businesses found regarding the discussion of family resources in entrepreneurial firms and entrepreneurial behaviours in family firms. These relations are around the family resource as a main resource for entrepreneurs to start up and run their business and there are some entrepreneurial behaviours such as innovation, risk-taking and proactiveness embed in family businesses. Due to these relations between entrepreneurship and family businesses, some family businesses can be considered entrepreneurial. Based on the discussion of the relationship between entrepreneurship and family businesses, I propose a model of a successful multi-generation family business. This model shows correlations among the family context, entrepreneurial behaviours, business management and succession in a successful multi-generation family business.
There are some directions recommended for further research on the relationship between entrepreneurship and family businesses. Further research should have a reliable study sample including family businesses from all sizes, types and business contexts. Further research with such a study sample will find out more about professionalism and its relationship to the financial involvement by non-family members in family businesses. Further study on the correlations among family context, entrepreneurial behaviours, business management and succession in family businesses might allow further research to produce an effective business strategy for successful multi-generation family firms.

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