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Dear colleagues,

We warmly invite you to our PDW: The Social Impact of Family Firms
📍 Bella Center, Hall D-D1-M4
🗓 Saturday, 26 July | 🕣 08:30–10:30

Registration link: AOM 2025 PDW - Societal impact of family firms

This session moves beyond traditional firm performance to explore the broader societal impact of family firms. We'll host interactive roundtable discussions led by top scholars across five key themes. When registering, please select the topic of most interest to ensure your spot at the corresponding table (details about the areas are below):

• Well-being & (Mental) Health – Johan Wiklund

• Strategy & Identity – Shaker A. Zahra

• Family Offices – Mattias Nordqvist

• Social Embeddedness & Capital – Sarah Jack

• Corporate Social Responsibility – Cristina Cruz

In this PDW, we will thus examine various important societal issues that are likely to concern stakeholders of family firms, including:

(1) Well-being and (Mental) Health-we will explore several important questions, such as how family firms affect the well-being and mental health of family owners and non-family employees; how do family and nonfamily employees cope with their stress differently (Ramli et al., 2023); and how does their mental health affect firm strategies and performance (Tetzlaff et al., 2023)?

(2) Strategy and Identity-we will discuss issues such as how family firms' strategic transformations and repurposing impact internal stakeholders (Hsueh et al., 2023), competitors, and their industry; how does the family identity adapt in response to societal events, such as war, political elections, and climate changes; and how do identity shifts change the firm strategy, such as entrepreneurship and internationalization strategies (Kuiken et al., 2024; Zahra, 2018; Zellweger et al., 2013)?

(3) Family Offices-we will investigate questions such as how family investment companies influence society through their potentially unique investment choices, preferences, and priorities  (see, e.g.,Schickinger et al., 2022); how do family members align their interests and expectations in determining how the family wealth is distributed to address different societal issues; and how do nonfamily managers help the family balance its wealth needs and societal values when arranging the family investment to address different societal causes?

(4) Social Embeddedness and Capital-we will examine topics such as how the family's connections in the local setting, such as political ties and industry membership, influence societal development at different levels, including the local community, home country, and host country; how do the family owners' caring relationships to certain stakeholders affect wider industry networks (Richards, 2023); how do the family's ties and embeddedness with different networks interact with each other and create synergy or conflict that benefit or undermine the development of communities in the region (Aldrich et al., 2021)?

(5) Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)-we will discuss questions such as whether family firms exhibit socially responsible or irresponsible behaviors and identify the specific aspects in which these behaviors manifest; how do certain aspects, such as the involvement of female family members (Cruz et al., 2014) or family branding (Richards et al., 2017)affect the firm's CSR efforts; and how do the increasing CSR reporting regulations affect family firms' CSR behavior?

Please don't hesitate to reach out in case you have any questions.

Best,

Mohamed

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Mohamed Genedy
Post Doctorate
Stockholm School of Economics (SSE)
& Jönköping University
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