Since the early 1980s, the rapid growth of family business research has led to the establishment of the academic field of family business. Family firm researchers have paid increasing attention to the antecedents, consequences, and anatomy of innovation in family businesses across various contexts (De Massis, Frattini, and Lichtenthaler, 2013; De Massis, Minin, and Frattini, 2015). Theoretical and empirical research has clearly demonstrated that family firms have highly idiosyncratic characteristics, distinguishing them from their non-family counterparts in the way they innovate and create value (Andreini, Bettinelli, Pedeliento, and Apa, 2020; Schell, Hiepler, and Moog, 2018).
The literature also reveals the existence of paradoxes in the innovative behaviour of family firms, and tensions between, for example, capacity and will; tradition and change; control and autonomy; and liquidity and growth (Chrisman, Chua, De Massis, Frattini, and Wright, 2015; Ingram, Lewis, Barton, and Gartner, 2016; Magistretti, Dell’Era, Frattini, and Petruzzelli, 2020).
Previous research highlights the desire to preserve tradition and non-financial objectives and the role of Socio-Emotional Wealth (SEW) (Berrone, Cruz, Gomez-Mejia, and Larraza-Kintana, 2010; Erdogan, Rondi, and De Massis, 2020; Ruf, Graffius, Wolff, Moog, and Felden, 2020). For example, acting in a manner consistent with their SEW objectives, founders of family firms who are concerned about their business’s sustainability are likely to reject changes that could jeopardize the family SEW…