Geographically dispersed organizations are becoming increasingly common, however, the organizational culture is often weaker in this type of organization due to geographical distances. One important aspect of the organizational culture is the organizational values, and if shared by all organizational members they can benefit the company on many levels, for example by increasing motivation and communication. If employees, on the other hand, fail to interpret the organizational values it may lead to decreased working moral and overall dissatisfaction. In family businesses it is the values of the family that constitute the organizational values, and these may be difficult to communicate to non-family employees, because family businesses often rely on informal communication.   The purpose of this thesis is to describe how non-family employees interpret the organizational values of a family business, as well as to increase the understanding of whether geographical distance affects their interpretation. In this thesis we have conducted a qualitative case study, in which ten semi-structured interviews were made in a geographically dispersed family business. We have assumed an employee perspective and have, thus, interviewed non-family employees on the different geographical locations of this family business.   The findings from the empirical data showed that the case studied organization does not have any formally written organizational values and the non-family employees have as a result interpreted the values slightly differently. The employees state the organizational values in general terms, which would make them applicable to any organization, or even society at large.   In the analysis we compare the theoretical framework and the empirical findings in order to present conclusions for the organization being studied. The analysis will be divided into themes; organizational structure, organizational culture and values as well as the relation between the non-family employees and the family business.   We were able to conclude that informal communication is not sufficient in order to efficiently communicate the organizational values in a geographically dispersed organization. Nevertheless, the geographical distance for each workplace respectively could not be identified as the only influencing factor that affects the employees’ interpretation of the organizational values. The organizational structure emerged as a contributing factor. The non-family employees’ interpretations were broad and general in terms of the organizational values. One of our recommendations is for the organization to write down the organizational values and distribute them throughout the organization, which will enable the organizational values to be correctly interpreted by all organizational members.

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After going through the literature on entrepreneurship we found that very little studies have been done whether culture and family business traditions influence the decisions of entrepreneurship. Most people from the South and Southeast Asia had cultural and family business backgrounds. The purpose of our study is to investigate if culture and family business traditions of South andSoutheast Asian immigrants affect their decision to become self-employed and if so how. This will enhance the understanding of whether this factor is also important to motivate the entrepreneurs to be self-employed. Most of the studies have pointed out the motivational factors such as pull factors and push factors as being the main influencing factors for immigrant entrepreneurs to choose self-employment. Although, there are various literatures on entrepreneurship and its motivating factors, cultural and family based business traditions, limited study has focused on showing how the cultural and family business background affect the decision making abilities of the entrepreneurs. We have focused on the immigrant entrepreneurs born in South and Southeast Asian region operating their businesses in Umea city. For conducting this study we have used semi-structured interviews from our six respondents to collect the data. Based on our findings we found that the entrepreneurs are influenced by culture and family business traditions. Their social identity plays an important role in motivating them to become entrepreneurs. These immigrants are exposed to business environment from a very early age which helps shape up their business minds. The experience gained from their parents and the cultural and family business traditions act as business opportunity for them in the host country. We believe that this study would be helpful in the future for other scholars who are willing to conduct further research on this particular topic of interest. Our findings have increased the understanding of how the cultural and family business traditions of South and Southeast Asian region do affect the entrepreneurs’ decision to become self-employed in Umea.

Family business research is a rapidly growing topic of interest. Nevertheless there has been little research explicitly dedicated to the connection between consumers’ and family businesses. This paper gives insight about the influence of the family business brand image and consumers’ purchase intentions. Hereby it was taken into consideration  that  low-involvement and product knowledge can influence this path. This was done by a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. The findings showed that consumers associate family business with high quality, passion, heritage, traditions, small companies and craftsmanship. In general these associations do not influence consumers buying behavior. However, specific target groups showed different results. Implications focus on using the family business as a secondary brand image and family businesses should deal with caution when using their origin as a primary brand image.

This thesis focuses on the decision making in the most common business form: family businesses. A well-established theoretical model within the family business field is The three circle-model, which is based on three different dimensions: family, ownership and business. Most of the family businesses stay small but the ones expanding face the dilemma of balancing the best development of the dimensions. However, these three dimensions can contradict each other and as a result the founders are forced to choose which of the dimensions to prioritize when taking decisions.The purpose of this thesis is to create an understanding of how the family, the ownership and the business dimensions affect founders thoughts and reasoning behind decisions in the expansion phase in first generation family firms with few owners.We have reached the conclusions with a qualitative approach using case studies. We have gathered the empirical data by using Life story and Critical incident to define expansion decisions in two companies. Furthermore we used semi-structured interviews with the aim of creating an understanding of the founders thoughts and reasoning behind the taken decisions.Our conclusion shows that business opportunities and the objective to remain in control of the family business highly influence the decision making during the expansion phase. Another conclusion is that the family has been affected far more by the decisions than it has had an impact on the decisions. The thesis gives insight about an area within the family business field, which previously has been neglected by researchers.

This paper examines family owned tourism businesses with a special focus on succession. In Nordic countries tourism has been widely promoted and used in rural development as a replacement economy for ‘traditional’ livelihoods based on rural production. Because the tourism and hospitality industry, especially in rural areas, is dominated by family enterprises, the topic of succession is of great relevance for tourism and tourism destinations. This paper looks at family businesses’ special characteristics, challenges and advantages in terms of ownership structure, lifestyle, motivations, employees and destination impact. This paper concludes that, while family-owned Small and Medium-sized enterprises make up the backbone of the tourism industry, especially in rural destinations, there exists insufficient research on their significance within tourism. A small percentage of family owned tourism businesses are successfully handed over to succeeding generations. Those that do are exceptional and more sustainable both in financial and marketing terms and therefore extremely advantageous for destinations. On the other hand, family businesses that fail to be passed on to following generations can have a devastating effect on tourism and destinations in general. / Den här uppsatsen behandlar familjeägda turistföretags betydelse för varaktigheten i landsbygdsdestinationer med fokus på succession. I våra nordiska länder har turism på senare år använts som landsbygdsutveckling och i viss mån som ersättning för de mer traditionella näringarna som jordbruk och fiske. Eftersom turism och besöksindustrin, speciellt i de perifera områdena, domineras av familjeföretag är succession inom dessa av stor betydelse för turism och turistdestinationer. Uppsatsen tar i övrigt upp familjeföretagens kännetecken, utmaningar och fördelar beträffande ägarstrukturer, livsstil, motivation, medarbetare och destinationspåverkan. Familjeföretag utgör ryggraden för turismindustrin i allmänhet och landsbygdsdestinationer i synnerhet men trots det saknas forskning om den här typen av företags betydelse för turism. Endast en liten andel av familjeägda turistföretag genomgår ett generationsskifte. Det gör att de som klarar en succession är unika och mer varaktiga både ur finansiell och ur marknadsmässig synpunkt vilket är mycket fördelaktigt för destinationen. Å andra sidan kan de företag som inte lyckas med en succession vara förödande för hela samhället där de verkar.

Family business is a typical governance structure around the world. From the resource-based theory viewpoint, the family members input and the trans-generational family business entrepreneurship is critical resources in family business sustainability. However, how the family capital can be a sustainable capability in family business entrepreneurship is an issue that needs to be investigated with life cycle stage in family businesses. By utilizing case studies, this research tries to investigate the role of family capital and family members in family business entrepreneurship with life cycle stage and scale consideration. The first observation reveals that family capital will develop from single to multiple items in differential life cycle and scale stage. In addressing the family business entrepreneurship issue, the development of family capital and organizational capital and the possible synergy between them are critical resources in family business entrepreneurship. Furthermore, the family capital implications in family business entrepreneurship need to be considered with the trans-generational family member characteristics and the possible synergy with organizational capital. In other words, family input and the family capital implications in family business entrepreneurship is integrated sustainable capabilities with life cycle and scale stage consideration in family businesses. The observation from Taiwan¡¦s family businesses can provide insights in family business entrepreneurship issue in greater Chinese contexts.

¡@¡@Corporate foundations initiated by large family enterprises are usually explained from the social responsibility viewpoint. In that, the family initiated the corporate foundations to achieve the social responsibility in the society. However, what is the possible control role of corporate foundations in family businesses is seldom investigated. By utilizing the over-eight-year data in Taiwan¡¦s family business groups, this study tries to investigate the antecedent of corporate foundations in large family business groups from the resource dependence theory and institutional theory viewpoint. The results indicate that the family ownership and family management will influence the control of corporate foundations in large family business groups in Taiwan. Specifically, the more likely that the family members involve in key decision-making roles in the group, and the more likely that the family members will utilize pyramidal ownership structure to control the multiple affiliates in the group, the more likely that the family members will serve as the key decision-making roles in the corporate foundations in the family business groups. The findings provide a power explanation in initiating corporate foundations in family business context. Moreover, the findings indicate that the corporate foundation play a key role in the share-controlled relationships in the large family business groups. The results provide referable values in discussing the non-profit organizations roles in family business group¡¦s control issues.

Family-owned enterprise is a typical governance structure around the world. In addressing the governance issues in family business, the founding family usually utilizes the direct or indirect ownership structure and also the management design to mitigate the typical agency-principal problem among founding family and the professional managers in family businesses. However, scholars indicate that the majority shareholders, such as the founding family in a family business, will induce the principal-principal agency concern, and also have the possibility to exploit the minority shareholder¡¦s interests in publicly traded family businesses. Thus, the corporate governance today will not only focus on mitigating the typical agency-principal problem, but also the principal-principal agency problem in family businesses. This study tries to examine the role of the internal audit¡¦s independence in addressing the performance issues in publicly traded family businesses in Taiwan. From the agency theory viewpoint, this study try to utilize the questionnaires method to estimate the degree of the internal audit¡¦s independence, and future examine its performance impact in family businesses in Taiwan. This study suggests that the internal audit power, and the internal audit independent execution, can be two kinds of independence indexes in estimating the degree of internal audit¡¦s independence. The results indicate that the internal audit¡¦s independence will generate direct and moderated impact on publicly trade family business¡¦s performance in Taiwan. Specifically, the more independent board of directors a family business has, the better performance that this focal firm behaves. Moreover, the internal audit¡¦s independence will generate positively direct impact on firm performance in a family business. Additionally, the degree of internal audit¡¦s independent execution will moderate the positive impact from independent board of directors and family leadership on firm performance in publicly trade family businesses in Taiwan. This study provides referable values in estimating the internal audit¡¦s independence in publicly trade businesses. And it also provides theoretical and practical implications in addressing governance issues in family businesses in Asia.

<p><strong>Problem:</strong> There is a significant lack of research within the family business area which focuses on the micro-processes of strategy. Johnson, Melin and Whittington (2003) stated that while the field of strategy has traditionally concentrated on the macro-level of organizations, it needs now to attend to much more micro-level phenomenon. Furthermore, there is a general lack of research within the family business area in regards to strategy processes due to "the family business definition dilemma" (Lumpkin, Martin & Vaughn, 2008, p. 127). This dilemma is suggested to be lessened by a better understanding of the impact of the individuals on the strategic process.</p><p><strong>Purpose:</strong> This thesis examines influences on the micro-processes of strategy formation in the family firm in order to contribute to the family business research area. The specific influences that are in focus we labeled as 'components of identity'. These components of identity focus on the 'who' of the micro-process. Components of identity include identity, psychological ownership and attachment.</p><p><strong>Main research question:</strong></p><p>How and why do the components of identity influence the micro-process of strategy in a family firm?</p><p><strong>Method:</strong> This is an exploratory study which is based on a qualitative study of 14 individuals in six family-owned companies in the Småland area of Sweden. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with both family members and non-family members in an attempt to create case studies and contribute inductively. The case studies are presented in a storytelling format and were then used as a starting point for our analysis. Each case was analyzed from the perspective of the different components of identity as well as studying the influence that the dyadic relationship has on the family members. The names of the companies and the people involved have been changed in order to protect their privacy since this topic is personal in nature.</p><p><strong>Main findings:</strong> Gaining a better understanding within our area of study has allowed us to make some conclusions about the "how and why" of micro-processes of strategy in the family firm. One of the main findings, which makes a vast difference in this area of research, is the fact that the power-base within each company must be identified in order to enable a correct understanding of the micro-processes within the firm. Further, our results show that history, both in terms of historical decisions regarding the family business as well as the individual's past, play a significant role on strategy formation today. Moreover, the circumstances and emotions surrounding the individuals' entry into the family business impacts not only on succession process but also the direction of the firm, risk taking behaviour and asset retention. We were also able to make some conclusions with regards to family business strategy process. As well as provide a starting point for further research into the micro-process and the family business definition, we provide a basis for a possible new direction of governance research.</p>