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5.2 Practical Implications
The findings in this study also yield some practical implications, especially for family
businesses that attempt to stay entrepreneurial through a proper management-governance
mechanism. We evidence the contribution of managerial stewardship to a firm's explorative
orientation, and suggest that family firms, in the pursuit of innovation, need to ensure their
managers to act more like a steward than a self-serving agent. Based on the three dimensions
of stewardship orientation, we provide several practical suggestions as follows to cultivate
managers’ pro-organizational attitude and behavior.
First, for the decision-making comprehensiveness, thorough planning and evaluation of
all contingencies not only matters with the quality of managerial decisions but also conduces
to identifying entrepreneurial opportunities; that is, managers are reluctant to do so with no
or little organizational slack at their disposal. The presence of slack resources allow firms to
buffer against losses from any failures so that managers are less likely to worry about the risk
of distant search beyond their comfort zone (Katila and Ahuja, 2002). When an organization
is better buffered from the impacts of uncertainty, managers are more likely to act in a
comprehensive way.
Second, for the participative governance, a fine-tuned governance arrangement which
aligns the interests of managers and owners is important in fostering managerial risk
readiness. We thus suggest that family members should embody the sense of integration,
which bonds family members and managers with the firm. Similar to the concept of family
harmony (Beehr, Drexler, and Faulkner, 1997), participative governance also refers to the
psychological contract of family members and managers to the firm. The harmonious
interaction between family members and managers makes it more possible for business
owners to support strategic decisions proposed by the management team and thus enhance
the effectiveness of a participative governance structure.
Finally, for managerial long-term orientation, our study considers the planning horizon
of managers critical to a family firm’s entrepreneurship. Several organizational practices are
commonly employed to boost managers’ long-term prospects. On the cognitive side, shared
vision and goals of the founding family helps professional managers build loyalty and
continuity to the firm (Upton, Teal, and Felan, 2001). On the social side, owners should
cultivate friendship ties with managers, such as inviting them for more involvement with
family activities to enhance non-family members’ emotional intimacy. On the incentive side,
some interest-alignment practices also conduce to lengthening the decision horizon of