How publicly quoted family business organizational behavior reflects financial crisis : a content analysis of the annual reports from 2008 to 2011

Abstract

The aim in this research is to analyze the strategic reactions the entrepreneurs in public traded family business take towards the global financial crisis. It is mainly based on a bilateral contextual structure: the internal context concerns the Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) five-dimension theoretical framework (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996) under family business background; the external con-text refers to the global financial crisis as a macro environment. Hence, the re-search question can be concluded as “how the entrepreneurs in large publicly traded family firm organizational behavior, named EO, reflects the global financial crisis?” Furthermore, during the analysis process, several assumptions originated from the research question will be extracted step by step in order to explore the connection between the theory and the practicalities. Indeed, the five dimensions in EO (autonomy, innovativeness, risk taking, proactiveness, and competitive aggressiveness) constitute a systematic congregation which aims to aid the entrepreneurs to transform the external crisis into the opportunities. As to the empirical materials, content analysis, as a methodological choice, will be applied basically upon a qualitative and deductive approach. The re-searching target is focused on the annual reports (especially for the shareholder letters) from the year 2008 to 2011. Four companies (Walmart, Samsung, Fiat and Ahlstrom) have been chosen as to typically verify the assumptions. Afterwards, it is to compare the findings based on the empirical information and the assumptions on the basis of the theories aiming to exploit the gap between the strategic-theoretical behaviors and the strategic-real behaviors. Ultimately, it is in fact the “gap” that leads the useful suggestions and recommendations which is able to support the entrepreneurs to survive and conquer the global economic turbulence.