Strategic Change Of Family Business:Institutional Complexity Perspective

With China's economy enters the stage of industrial restructuring,the degree of environmental dynamics and environmental turbulence deepened,only to speed up the pace of transformation and upgrading,and actively adapt to environmental changes,can really get rid of the dilemma and maintain competitive advantage.Strategic change is one of the important means of coordinating the internal and external resources of the organization to effectively adapt to environmental changes.Its purpose is to build and maintain the competitive advantage of the enterprise.Family business as the main business of private enterprises,only to actively carry out strategic changes can effectively deal with the transformation,and to achieve sustainable development and sustainable growth.The strategic change of family business has not attracted enough attention inacademia for a long time.At present,there is still lack of understanding about the existence of family power can promote or hinder the initiation of strategic change.Based on institutional complexity theory,this paper analyzes the motivation of family business' strategic change from a new perspective,and focuses on the heterogeneous strategic behavior of family business groups.Specifically,this paper carried out three interrelated and progressive sub-studies.Sub-study 1(Chapter 3)analyzes the longitudinal historical cases of New Hope Group,answers how the multiple logic nature of family business evolves,and whether the family involvement under the influence of multiple institutional logics affect strategic change behavior.Sub-Study 2(Chapter 4)and Sub-Study 3(Chapter 5)used China's manufacturing family listed companies as the research object,divided the strategic change into two dimensions:vertical strategic persistence-variation and horizontal strategic conformity-deviation,respectively from the dynamic and static perspective,discussed the direct effect of family involvement on strategic change and the situational mechanism.Through the case analysis and empirical study,this paper draws the following conclusions:First,in the process of family business growth,the business's pluralistic institutional logics follows the dynamic evolution path of "Alliance Stage-Contested Stage-Dominant Stage".With the logical nature transition to the "dominant stage",the market logic-orientation becomes more and more obvious,the frequency of strategic change also gradually increase.On the contrary,in the stage of family logic has a relatively strong impact,the degree of family involvement is relatively high,the tendency of strategic persistence is also greater;Secondly,family ownership and family management of the listed family business can hinder the initiation of strategic change.From the vertical strategic change,the increase of family ownership and family management can lead to more strategic persistence behavior;from the horizontal strategic change,the increase in family ownership can also lead to more strategic conformity behavior.Secondly,capital market performance pressure(analyst assessment gap)and the increase of firm size can reduce the positive impact of family involvement on strategic persistence,which is conducive to the adjustment of strategic behavior under family control.Finally,and CEO non-duality,non-family CEO and industrial performance aspiration gap can be used as legitimacy signal,alleviate the legitimacy pressure of family listed companies,thus weakening the positive relationship between family ownership and strategic conformity,and promote the degree of strategic adjustment.The main innovations of this research are the following points:Firstly,this paper introduced the theory of institutional complexity into the field of family business strategy research,and explored the influence of family involvement on strategic change.It is helpful to comprehensively understand the motivations and analysis of family business's strategic change behavior;Secondly,this paper analyze the family business strategy selection process from a dynamic perspective,in particular,expand the research of the historical contingency of institutional logic,the conflict of institutional logics and the legitimacy mechanism,it is helpful to make up for the limitations of previous static research perspective;Thirdly,through integrating signal theory,this paper examines the initiative of family business in coping with institutional pressure,and examines the validity of the CEO non-duality,CEO identity and industrial performance aspiration gap as legitimacy signal;Finally,in the context of Chinese listed companies,the source of heterogeneity behavior of family business has been deconstructed,this paper provides a useful exploration to understand the generation of heterogeneity behavior of family business.Finally,according to the research conclusion,this paper puts forward the corresponding management and policy suggestions,points out the limitations of the study and the possible future research directions.