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Conceptualisation

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Entrepreneurship in Family Business

Part of the book series: International Studies in Entrepreneurship ((ISEN,volume 30))

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Abstract

The last chapter provided an overview of the respective development of family business and entrepreneurship research. Drawing on the developments and progress in the evolution of the family business and entrepreneurship literatures, the research question was established at the end of the last chapter. This chapter, in turn, will provide an in-depth examination of the two major constructs that the research question is built on, namely “familiness” and entrepreneurial processes, which sets the conceptual framework and contributes to the overall design of this research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As discussed in the previous section, the corrective of this question should be “how family is a business?” (Rutherford et al. 2008).

  2. 2.

    Similar distinctions include Tönnies’ (1887/1957) Gemeinschaft versus Gesellschaft (community versus society) and Maine’s (1861) contract versus status.

  3. 3.

    In innovation studies, the newness of an innovation is usually measured against the business and the industry. Novel innovations are new to both the business and the industry, and non-novel innovations are new to the business but not to the industry (Whittaker et al. 2009).

  4. 4.

    The imitation extreme represents pure clone of existing products and services, while the innovation extreme represents innovations that are entirely new to the market and industry. Between the extremes are innovations that are new to the business or local market but not to the industry (Whittaker et al. 2009; Zhou 2006).

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  1. New Zealand Asia Institute, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Henry X. Shi

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Shi, H.X. (2014). Conceptualisation. In: Entrepreneurship in Family Business. International Studies in Entrepreneurship, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04304-3_2

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