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家族企業之興業行為：探究忠僕型經理人、開創性導向以及新產品開發之關係
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March, 1993; March, 1991; Cao, Gedajlovic, and Zhang, 2009). Although the need for an
organization to pursue these two very different processes simultaneously is well received, we
have limited knowledge about innovative outcome of exploration activities in family
business. Unlike other extant studies which highlight the risky nature of exploration or
concern with trade-offs between exploration and exploitation, our finding shows that family
firm’s benefit from their explorative activities under certain conditions. We thus suggest
managers in the family-oriented culture should pursue long-term wealth by engaging in
radical and progressive innovation as an assurance of the “future-proofness”.
Based on the empirical support for Hypothesis 3, we extend the upper echelon
perspective of Minichilli, Corbetta, and MacMillan (2010) and De Massis et al. (2013) by
identifying the mediating role of explorative orientation. Though the upper echelon
perspective is particularly applicable to family-controlled firms where family managers exert
a strong leadership influence on a wide range of organizational outcomes, upper echelon
literature generally stresses on the importance of managers’ demographic attributes such as
age, gender, education, and functional background, (Hambrick and Mason, 1984) and
overlooks the entrepreneurial process within a family business. Our finding contributes to
this stream of literature by highlighting the intermediary role of explorative orientation in a
family firm’s run up to NPD performance; that is, not only are the governance settings for
high-level managers in need but company-wide explorative orientation should be ready for
the firm’s pursuit of innovation.
Furthermore, in light of the result of Hypothesis 4, we provide a different insight into
the entrepreneurial behavior in firms with family social capital. In addition to the sense of
socio-emotional wealth of family firms and the unification of ownership with control power
(Stewart and Hitt, 2012), Gómez-Mejía et al. (2007) further point out other disabling factors
of a family firm’s explorative attempts. For example, strong family ties may make family
firms more likely stay with their current markets rather than explore new opportunities in
other markets. In contrast, the study shows a positive moderating role of family social capital
in the NPD outcome of the focal company’s entrepreneurial orientation. Though family
social capital may embed decision makers in the current path, it turns out to be an enabler of
NPD performance when the focal organization is more entrepreneurially ready because of
the advantage of social capital in unique and privileged accesses to vital resources such as
legitimacy, exclusive information, financial and emotional support.