CALL: Family Business and Regional Development - LAEMOS 2018

[entrepreneurship-phd at lists.uni-due.de]

From: Rodrigo Basco [mailto:bascorodrigo at gmail.com]
Date: Thu 28 Sep 2017

Authors will be able to submit their abstracts (1.000 words) through the website http://www.laemos.com until October  10th, 2017 (SUB-02: Family Business and Regional Development). Notifications of acceptance will be provided by early December 2017. 

7th Latin America and European Meeting on Organizations Studies (LAEMOS 2018) “Organizing for Resilience: Scholarship in Unsettled Times”
IAE Business School - Buenos Aires – Argentina 22nd to 24th March 2018

Sub-Theme: “Family Business and Regional Development”

Pedro Vázquez
FCE - Universidad Austral, Argentina
pvazquez at austral.edu.ar

Rodrigo Basco 
Sheikh Saoud bin Khalid bin Khalid Al-Qassimi Chair in Family Business  
American University of Sharjah  
bascorodrigo at gmail.com  

Héctor Rocha
IAE, Argentina
hrocha at iae.edu.ar

Family firms are the most common form of organization in the world (Bjuggren, et al., 2011; Faccio & Lang, 2002; Shanker & Astrachan, 1996) – both in developing and developed economies. Family firms are characterized by the family involvement in ownership, management and control affecting the way firms behave (Gomez-Mejia, et al., 2011) and compete (Basco, 2014). Family involvement in economic activities makes family firms being among the world’s oldest firms (The Economist, 2015), to focus more on resilience than performance (Kachaner, et al., 2012), to perform better than non-family firms (Mazzi, 2011) in some contexts, and to have a particular inclination for social issues (Van Gils, et al., 2014; Vazquez, 2016). However, on the other hand, there is a high mortality among family firms during the management succession process from one generation to another, there is a lack of professionalization (Bloom & Van Reenen, 2010) that pushes them to compete in sub-markets and, in some countries, family business tend to control country strategic resources (Morck & Yeung, 2004) increasing social and economic inequality (Fogel, 2006). Consequently, family involvement in economic activities has a paradoxical view as a resilient/rigid organization – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde effect (Basco, 2015) – with positive and negative effect for economic development(Basco & Bartkeviciute, 2016).

The field of family business has gained significant external legitimacy (Chrisman, et al., 2003; Pérez Rodríguez & Basco, 2011) since its inception by analyzing the family effect on the firm (firm-familiness effect), but a macro understanding of the family firm on regional economic and and social development has hardly being investigated (Stough, et al., 2015). To date, the regional familiness model (Basco, 2015) posits that family firms’ embeddedness in social, economic, and productive structures may affect the geographical dynamics (e.g., factors of production, regional processes, and dimensions of proximity) responsible for social and economic development. However, several questions remain open and unexplored.

The aim of this track is to address the call made by Stough, Welter, Block, Wennberg, and Basco (2015) to further investigate the role that family firms plays in regional development, entrepreneurship and clusters (Rocha 2015; 2004). Through studies about how, when, and under what circumstances the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde effect emerges, the special track will help expand our understanding of family business through the researchers’ findings about the applicability of extant theories and empirical evidence from developing and developed economies. In addition, this special track can help us develop newly grounded theories to achieve a better understanding of family business and regional development.

Questions and themes that can be submitted and developed for this special track include, yet are not limited to:
• How do national and regional contexts in Latin America affect resilience of family firms?
• How do family firms contribute to regional development, specifically in terms of regional employment and innovation?
• What causal mechanisms underlie the role of family firms in regional development?
• Do family firms care more than other firms about the region in which they are located?
• Which characteristics of family firms (e.g., management, ownership, control) matter?
• What is the role of the founder, and what is the role of succeeding family generations?
• What is the role of family-owned businesses in the region in which they are located?
• Which regional policies help family firms grow? Which regions attract family firms, and which do not?
• Which regional conditions foster family firm development? Which barriers do family firms experience at the regional level?
• How can family firms benefit from a strong regional entrepreneurial orientation?
• How do family firms affect regional competitiveness?
• How do family firms contribute to the development and formation of industrial clusters and regional milieus?
• What ethical dilemmas arise for families in business in the context of adverse situations? How do family firms and business families deal with ethical issues?
• How do some governance-related characteristics such as autocracy, entrenchment, nepotism, and resistance to change affect family business resilience?

LAEMOS is the premier conference on Latin American and European Organization Studies. Its purpose is to strengthen the Latin America-Europe scholarly link by encouraging interdisciplinary studies of organizations in Latin American and European societies. LAEMOS Conference “Organizing for Resilience: Scholarship in Unsettled Times” will take place from 22nd to 24th March 2018 at IAE Business School, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Authors will be able to submit their abstracts (1.000 words) through the website http://www.laemos.com until September 30, 2017 (SUB-02: Family Business and Regional Development). Notifications of acceptance will be provided by early December 2017. Please do not hesitate to contact Pedro Vázquez (pvazquez at austral.edu.ar) and the organizing committee (localaemos2018 at gmail.com) should you need any clarification or further assistance.



Rodrigo Basco, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Sheikh Saoud bin Khalid bin Khalid Al-Qassimi Chair in Family Business   
American University of Sharjah

Last post: Call for papers: Contextualizing Family Firms in the Arab World [https://familyfirmblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/11/contextualizing-family-firms-in-the-arab-world/]
Facebook: Family Business Chair - American University of Sharjah [https://www.facebook.com/Mgtfamilybusiness/]