Family Businesses' Culture and Innovativeness of Successors

Abstract

The article empirically examines the relationship between family businesses’ culture and successors’ innovativeness. A quantitative empirical research approach was adapted on the smaller sample of family SMEs in Slovenia. The research results demonstrate that the family business culture of individual orientation is perceived by successors as very important for their innovativeness and positively influences their creativity and process innovations. The empirical evidence also supports our hypothesis that long-term orientation of the family businesses culture positively affects successors’ creativity, original thinking, experimenting with new ways of doing things, development of new ideas, new products and services. Research findings show that relationships between family businesses’ culture influenced by founders’ value system and successors’ innovativeness are complex.

Keywords

• amily business
• successors
• organizational culture
• innovativeness
• transition country