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This research is aimed to better understand what characteristics of family firms create a context in which family governance systems are more frequently adopted.

We analyse a sample of 490 Spanish family businesses using cluster analysis, and we identify four different types of family businesses whose characteristics are associated to the adoption of different family governance systems, i.e. family councils and family protocols. The comparison between clusters of the baseline parameters was performed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) for parametric variables, the χ2 test for parametric variables and Kruskal-Wallis for nonparametric variables. By conducting between-profile analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), we tested for differences in the dependent variables (i.e. the existence of family councils and/or existence of family protocols) between the clusters, using cluster membership as the independent variable.

Taking into account the characteristics of family firms in terms of ownership structure, management involvement, and family and organizational complexity, we identify four different contexts that create different communication needs and are related to the use of different family governance mechanisms. We characterize the different contexts or types of family firms as: founder-centric, protective, consensual and business-evolved. Our findings show that family protocols are associated to contexts with high family involvement in management and family complexity, while family councils are more frequent when there is a separation of managerial and ownership roles and there is a high organizational and family complexity.

The study highlights the value of social systems theory in order to explain the association between the characteristics of different firm types and contexts, and the use of family councils and family protocols to govern the relationship between the owner family and the business.

Family governance mechanisms are widely recommended by practitioners and scholars. However, they are usually adopted only by a small percentage of family firms. This study helps to better understand what family governance systems may be more appropriate in different contexts and relativize the necessity of these governance mechanisms in function of the communication needs created within each context.

The improvement of family governance mechanisms helps to increase the likelihood of survival and durability of family firms. These firms contribute to more than 60% of employment in most developed countries. Consequently, good governance in family firms has social implications in terms of labour conditions and stability.

Most family firms don't use family protocols or family councils to govern the relationship between the owner family and the firm. However, little is known about the reasons for this lack of structuration of the family-firm relationship. Using social systems theory, our research contributes to better understand the conditions in which business families are more prone to use structured forms to manage this relationship, as well as the reasons that may be constraining their adoption.

This study analyzes the effectiveness of research and development (R&D) organizations’ strategies for obtaining competitive international funding and the role of research management offices (RMOs) in this process. It examines the internal factors that influence the proactivity and effectiveness of R&D centers and provides a theoretical model for improving the fundraising capacity and, ultimately, the competitiveness and sustainability of these institutions.

The study sample comprised Spanish public R&D centers in the health and biomedical sectors. Partial least squares were used in the analyses to ensure the robustness of the results.

Several independent variables showed a significant impact on the proactivity and effectiveness of R&D centers. The dispersed priorities of R&D managers reduce proactivity and fundraising effectiveness. Incentives and RMO workload increase proactivity, but workload alone also improves effectiveness.

This study focuses on the management of health and biomedical R&D centers. It examines the influence of internal factors, such as managerial priorities, RMO incentives and RMO workload, on competitive international funding. These findings have significant theoretical and practical implications for the development of internationally applicable management strategies to enhance the effectiveness of research funding acquisition.

本研究擬探討研發機構在尋求國際資助時所採用的策略的效果,以及在這個過程中研究管理辦公室所扮演的角色。具體地說,本研究擬探討影響研發中心主動性和有效性的內部因素,進而提供一個理論模型,以改善研發機構的籌款能力,而最終使它們的競爭力和可持續性可得到提昇.

本研究使用的樣本均來自健康和生物醫學領域內的西班牙公共研發中心,研究人員以偏最小二乘法進行分析,以確保研究結果的魯棒性.

研究結果顯示,有些自變量會對研發中心的主動性和有效性產生重大的影響。研發經理的分散優先事項會減弱機構的主動性和籌款的有效性。研究結果亦顯示,激勵措施和RMO工作量均會提昇主動性,而僅僅工作量亦會改善有效性.

本研究把焦點放在健康和生物醫學研發中心的管理上,研究人員探討如管理優先事項、RMO 激勵措施和 RMO 工作量等的內部因素對競爭性國際資助的影響。研究結果提供重要的理論與實務啟示,使我們更了解,若要提昇尋求研究資助措施的有效性,制定國際適用的管理策略至為重要.

In this paper we propose to study the differences among family and non-family-firms in relation to its financial strength, and therefore its potential position to resist in front of financial crisis and receive financial support or conditions by public or private institutions.

We used multiple hierarchical regressions on a sample of 137 Spanish medium-sized firms (SMEs).

We observe that the perspectives and idiosyncratic characteristics of family-firms (strongly influenced by their socioemotional wealth) will affect the way these companies invest and operate in the market, which would be more related to efficiency because of their higher willingness to continue the legacy of the business and their weak risk-bearing attributes.

Our study adopts a measure of familiness with a dummy variable, and not as a continuous variable as proposed by recent research. Therefore, our results although relevant and significant for the family firm literature, must be viewed carefully. Additional research could also retest some prior studies to depict differences caused by “real” family firm involvement.

Under a non-munificent environment, the financial strength maintained by firms will be highly relevant since this context could likely stress and influence their immediate future and viability, overcoming and blurring any other characteristic present in the firm or its managers.

This paper contributes to the family firm literature by offering insights into the nuanced dynamics between family and non-family firms during economic downturns, specifically examining their financial strength when different strategic options are pursued and when firms are managed by different type of managers.

The last decade has been witness to an unprecedented growth in the number of alliances between companies. This growing importance of interfirm co‐operation, together with its inherent complexity, have generated a progressive interest in the study of this phenomenon, which has materialised in a vast but fragmented literature concerning it. As a response to the demands which these conditions pose, we have endeavoured to develop a conceptual framework which, from a knowledge‐based and learning perspective, integrates an extensive series of contributions and concepts for the study of the processes of co‐operation between companies. As distinctive features, our conceptual framework proposal sets up a bridge between formulation and implementation in alliance processes and goes into the alliance micro‐level processes, both in the framework of the co‐operative agreement and in the setting of the partners’ organisations. Additionally, our proposal also considers the different ontological levels where knowledge develops and the links existing between them.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Focus Section “Creativity and innovation in the firm: managerial antecedents and effects on employees”, which forms the first of two separate parts of the journal special issue.

The guest editors summarize the three papers which comprise this Focus Section.

The selected papers are found to relate to the Focus Section theme of impact of managers’ characteristics on creativity and innovation, and innovation effects on employees.

The paper shows that the Focus Section offers new insights for students of innovation and creativity by providing fresh ideas about whether and how top manager characteristics influence organizational creativity through their effect on employees’ creativity, by means of idealization, inspirational motivation and intellectual stimulation.

The paper aims to focus on fostering a strategic attitude and creativity‐related competences among management students, through alternative teaching‐learning methods, whereby students propose “crazy” ideas that can be applicable to (business) organizations.

The approach taken was an active learning classroom experiment. In total, 22 participants volunteered among the authors' own students, enrolled at different management‐related degrees at the University of Valencia (Spain).

Five student teams proposed very interesting and original ideas (some “crazier” than others, many highly relevant and feasible), aimed at tackling relevant challenges at the workplace or at the university.

Further research may be inspired by this experiment, expanding the scope of the inquiry to other student profiles and/or to actual initiatives involving organizational development and learning dynamics.

All proposals implied that employees/students who have fun will be more committed to their job/studies, involving “win‐win” outcomes. Moreover, the university‐related proposals can be easily adapted to a workplace context. On the other hand, the experiment itself can be also adapted as part of organizational development and learning policies – with employees taking the role here assigned to students.

These “crazy” ideas are invaluable in societies needing radical social‐economic change (e.g. Spain) towards new, knowledge‐based models.

Beyond the most immediate benefits for them, private and public organizations can crucially contribute to knowledge‐driven social‐economic change by embracing these “crazy” ideas in their development and learning policies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role played by different types of firm innovation on employee downsizing. Drawing on economic and management views, the authors aims to assess the potential positive or negative effect of different types of processes (i.e. new technology via the introduction of new equipment as well as new methods of organizing the workforce) and product (i.e. number of innovations) innovations on employee downsizing.

The empirical setting is a sample of Spanish manufacturing firms over the period 1994‐2006. The authors employ probit models for panel data as an empirical tool.

The results show a negative and significant effect of process innovations associated with acquiring and deploying new production equipment and product‐oriented innovations on the probability of carrying out important reductions in workforce. However, a positive and significant effect is found when process innovations are linked to the adoption of new methods of organizing the workforce.

Managers might play a significant role in employment creation, especially when they carry out process innovations related to the acquisition of complementary production assets (i.e. new equipment) and market highly innovative products. Policy makers might contribute to diminish the potential number of employees affected by firms’ downsizing strategies by designing, for example, public subsidies systems that deliberately prompt both types of innovations.

The authors make an effort to provide alternative explanations about why firms downsize, as they analyze different types of process and product innovations whose effects on employment (and, thus, downsizing) do not seem to be clear. Moreover, the paper furthers one's understanding of the effect of firm innovation by focusing on the potential effect of one type of process innovation which has not been examined until now: the adoption and implementation of new methods of organizing the workforce owing to new technology.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of self‐assessed health on retirement plans of older migrants living in France. As immigration is primarily associated with labor considerations, the role of economic incentives in the migration decision suggests that health could play a minor effect in immigrants’ decision to retire.

Using detailed data on immigrants living in France collected in 2003, the authors examine the role of health on early retirement intentions using simultaneous, recursive models that account for the fact that subjective health is potentially endogenous.

It is found that being in poor health increases the intention of migrant workers to retire early, but the subjective health outcomes have little influence on retirement plans.

Since subjective health outcomes have less influence on retirement plan than economic variables, migrants may have incentives to postpone their retirement decisions in order to avoid an excessive pension reduction.

Knowing the relative contribution of health variables and economic factors in the context of migration is a challenging issue since in almost all industrialized countries, the proportion of migrants having retired or nearing retirement has increased substantially. The authors’ analysis is the first contribution to study the role of health on retirement intentions of older migrants.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of leaders’ creativity as a predictor of organizational creativity. The authors expected that creative leaders would promote creativity directly by functioning as a model and inspiration for their followers and indirectly by promoting a creativity‐supporting work climate.

The research was conducted in organizations within the restaurant sector; the data were obtained using questionnaires to employees and leaders (n=207), as well as external raters’ evaluation of restaurant creativity level. Responses from each organization were aggregated using mean scores (n=39).

Significant positive associations were found between leaders’ creative behavior, organizational creative climates, and organizational creative behavior. Mediation analyses revealed that the relationship between leaders’ creative behavior and organizational creativity was mediated by organizational creative climate.

The results may provide useful guidelines for organizations that put emphasis on creativity, both for leader recruitment and leader development.

The paper contributes to the creativity literature since it is one of the first to explore leader personality and leader creative behavior as predictors of creativity in organizations.