Breaking new ground in family business research with neoconfigurational theorizing and analysis
Journal of Family Business Management
ISSN: 2043-6238
Article publication date: 24 July 2023
Issue publication date: 3 April 2024
Abstract
Purpose
Because family businesses are highly complex enterprises, researchers need appropriate theoretical and methodological tools to study them. The neoconfigurational perspective and its accompanying method, qualitative comparative analysis, are particularly well suited to phenomena characterized by complex causality, but their uptake in family business research has been slow and fragmented. To remedy this, the authors highlight their unique ability to address research questions for which other approaches are not well suited and discuss how they might be applied to family business phenomena.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors introduce the core tenets of the neoconfigurational perspective and how its set-theoretic epistemology differs from traditional approaches to theorizing and analysis. The authors then use a dataset of family firms to present a primer on conducting qualitative comparative analysis and interpreting the results.
Findings
The authors find that family firm resources can be combined in multiple ways to affect business survival, suggesting that resources are substitutable and complementary. The authors discuss how the unique features of the neoconfigurational approach, namely equifinality, conjunctural causation and causal asymmetry, can be fruitfully applied to break new ground in scholarly understanding of family businesses.
Originality/value
This article allows family business researchers to apply the neoconfigurational approach without first having to consult multiple and disparate sources often written for other disciplines. This article explicates how to leverage the theoretical and empirical advantages of the neoconfigurational approach in the context of family businesses, supporting a more widespread adoption of the neoconfigurational perspective in family business research.
Keywords
Citation
Mallon, M.R. and Fainshmidt, S. (2024), "Breaking new ground in family business research with neoconfigurational theorizing and analysis", Journal of Family Business Management, Vol. 14 No. 2, pp. 266-285. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFBM-02-2023-0019
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited