Browsing by Person "Arz, Christopher"

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A software for corporate entrepreneurship? The role of organizational culture for stimulating entrepreneurial orientation in family firms
(2019) Arz, Christopher; Kuckertz, Andreas
This doctoral thesis comprises three empirical studies which together seek to shed light upon the question of which and how specific manifestations of organizational culture (OC) are able to support entrepreneurial behaviors and activities in established organizations (corporate entrepreneurship; CE). As a whole, this thesis addresses a variety of research questions, relying on different methodological approaches and data sets. More specifically, I use both original and secondary data, and I draw on qualitative, interpretive as well as quantitative, positivist research design. The specific objectives, concepts, and methods of the studies are guided by the two overarching research questions of this thesis: 1) What are the dominant cultural patterns of family firms that create an organizational environment where corporate entrepreneurship flourishes? 2) How exactly do these cultural patterns operate and interact in the process of stimulating corporate entrepreneurship? The first study titled “Mechanisms of Organizational Culture for Fostering Corporate Entrepreneurship: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda” provides a broad overview of the current body of knowledge on the OC-CE relationship and synthesizes generic OC mechanisms supportive of CE into an explicit framework. Adopting the method of structured literature review and realist synthesis, it analyzes 46 empirical and conceptual papers published in peer-reviewed journals and strives to make sense of the diverse, and partly conflicting, theoretical predictions and empirical findings which currently characterize the field. To accomplish that, the study integrates eight generic OC dimensions and two basic layers of culture to enable CE-supportive cultural mechanisms to be synthesized into a clear matrix. Doing so allows for more a fine-grained understanding of how OC may create an environment where CE flourishes. Based on the synthesis, research avenues are identified to encourage future work on the topic. The second study titled “Bridging the Micro-Macro Gap: A Multi-Layer Culture Framework for Understanding Entrepreneurial Orientation in Family Firms” responds to the enduring unanswered call for qualitative research on the topic of Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) that is located within an interpretivist-oriented philosophy. Employing an interpretivist single case study design, the study seeks to elaborate the theory of EO in family firms by delivering a rich and deeply contextualized understanding of the business-level mechanisms that operate between family-level values (micro level) and firm-level EO (macro level) in a second-generation German family firm. Specifically, it adopts a multi-layer theory of culture as interpretive framework to develop a grounded model that cuts across analytical levels of family and business. The illustration of the data, based on a qualitative content analysis of both archival data and ethnographic interview data, shows how the unique cultural patterns of the firm operate as social mechanisms to stimulate EO. Specifically, family-level values of altruism and preservation have been found to prepare the ground for an OC characterized by long-term- and involvement-oriented organizational values as well as psychological safety and empowerment climates. Eventually, these climates represent the most salient cultural layer and effectively support the firm’s competitive orientation toward corporate entrepreneurship. Finally, the third study of this thesis titled “Stimulating Entrepreneurial Orientation in Family Firms: A Multi-Layer Culture Model” takes a more technical (positivist) perspective on the phenomenon of OC and investigates how the specific business-level cultural mechanisms of family firms can transform the intimate connection between family and business into high levels of EO. To provide a deeper understanding of the forces that nurture EO in family firms, the study finds a way to bridge the gap between family-level characteristics and firm-level EO by integrating family commitment culture, long-term orientation, and stewardship climate into a multi-layer culture framework. The research model that derives from this perspective proposes a two-step mediation process, intending to explain how family commitment culture, as a family-level value orientation, is transformed into high levels of EO through OC mechanisms. The model was tested by analyzing data of 208 mature German family firms using covariance-based structural equation modelling (SEM). Consistent with the proposed multi-layer structure, the SEM model’s results support the hypothesis that, when high levels of EO are desired, family firms ought to focus on what type of cultural mechanisms are triggered at the business level through a family commitment culture.