Organizational Resilience and Family Firm Performance: The Role of Socioemotional Wealth

Purpose: The objective of the article is to investigate the relationship between organizational resilience and family firm performance and the mediating role of socioemotional wealth. We take into account socio-emotional wealth as a triggering mechanism in the above-stated relationship. Design/Methodology/Approach: To test the main relationship of our paper we conducted empirical quantitative research on the sample of 193 Polish family businesses. Data were gathered in the summer of 2017. To verify hypotheses we used structural equation modelling with mediation tests in the MPlus statistical package. Findings: Drawing on the findings, we develop the notion of organizational resilience as an ambidextrous dynamic capability and conceptualize it as community robustness and creative agility. Our findings show that the increase in organizational resilience enhances the family firm performance and negatively affects all socioemotional wealth dimensions. Surprisingly, family business corporate governance negatively affects firm performance. It mediates the basic relationship of our study. Practical Implications: Our research proves that family business resilience is a dynamic capability enabling companies to reconcile robustness with agility. According to the research results, enhancing resilience within family business will foster firm performance. Therefore, managers and owners of family business should focus their attention on developing climate and the ability to reconcile the robustness of a company with its agility. Originality/Value: Our study contributes to the knowledge in the field by developing of the organizational resilience construct as an ambidextrous dynamic capability and propose how it can be assessed. In the we study show that family business resilience positively influences family firm performance, and socioemotional wealth mediates the relationship between both of the main constructs.