The entrepreneuring family: a new paradigm for family business research

Abstract

The purpose of this special issue is to examine the intersection of entrepreneurship and family business, and more specifically the notion of the entrepreneuring family. Despite a growing awareness of familyowned businesses and their contribution to the world’s developed and developing economies, the debate continues regarding their role in entrepreneurship. Family firms are commonly perceived as traditional, old-fashioned and stagnant. The term ‘‘family management’’ has been contrasted with ‘‘professional management.’’ Early family firm research put family and business objectives at opposite poles—as family first versus business first (Ward 1997). A more recent model proposes that business-owning families characterized by a strong family orientation (e.g., interdependence, security, stability, tradition and loyalty) may create a tension that actually pulls the business (and the businessowning family) away from an entrepreneurial orientation (e.g., autonomy, risk-taking propensity, innovativeness, proactiveness, etc.; Martin et al. 2006). Such research enforces the public and academic perception of the entrepreneuring family as an oxymoron—that is, a contradiction in terms. However, recent empirical research by Leenders and Waarts (2003) supports an alternative paradigm, i.e., a view that strong family and entrepreneurial objectives can function side by side with one another (Lumpkin et al. 2008). Based on the papers presented in this special issue, we argue that it is time to explore this new paradigm more fully, i.e., one that reflects the entrepreneurial behaviors of many family-owned and/or -managed firms. We want to discover why some businessowning families embrace dynasty building through L. M. Uhlaner (&) Center for Entrepreneurship, Nyenrode Business Universiteit, P.O. Box 130, 3620 AC Breukelen, The Netherlands e-mail: l.uhlaner@nyenrode.nl