Trust lies at the heart of relationships. On the one hand, organizational trust is a crucial source of competitive advantage for family firms hence the initial trust embedded in the firm shapes interaction between the family and business systems. On the other hand, familiness has become widely accepted as the appropriate construct representing the unique bundle of resources arising out of family involvement in business. However, we do " not fully understand the nature of trust, the types of familiness or the conditions that give rise to them, their impact on the firm's entrepreneurial activity as well as the firm's performance. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore organizational trust and familiness construct, and its role in perpetuating entrepreneurial activity to achieve nonfinancial performance objectives across multiple generations of family businesses in Nigeria. The exploratory nature of this study permits us to use in-depth qualitative case studies. Data was collected via semi-structured interviews, observation and secondary documents from six (6) multigenerational family firms in Nigeria. NVivo assisted with the coding and analysis of data, identifying themes, patterns and comparing within and across case analysis. The empirical finding of this study is threefold. Firstly, we identified resource dimensions that constitute the nature of: Organisational Trust (communication, experience, reward, commitment, openness, meetings); Familiness (relationships, networks, leadership, culture, learning, decision making, research & development, experience, commitment, shared Vision/goals, location, distribution channels, family funding, non-family funding); Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) (pro-activeness, risk taking, autonomy, competitive aggressiveness, innovativeness); and, Non-Financial Performance (growth, continuity, customer satisfaction, market share/position, philanthropy, workforce, legacy). Secondly, we identified a symbiotic relationship ,between: organisational trust and EO; organisational trust and familiness; organisational trust and non-financial performance; familiness and EO; familiness and non-financial performance; EO and non-financial performance. Thirdly, we identified that family generation plays a moderating role in the symbiotic relationship between organisational trust and EO; and between familiness and EO. In summary, the study contributes to theory (better understanding of the studied constructs) practice (valuable information for family business owners/managers) and education (curriculum).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:665467 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Ogidi, Emeka John Paul |
| Publisher | University of Surrey |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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