Corporate Venturing in Family Firms: A Focus on its Determinants at Multiple Levels

Corporate venturing has gained increasing importance in both business and academic discussions, particularly in relation to its role in promoting innovation and growth within companies. But what are the specific benefits of corporate venturing for family firms? How do their unique characteristics shape their engagement in corporate venturing activities across different levels? This PhD dissertation aims to address these questions by analyzing corporate venturing in family firms through a multi-level approach, considering the individual, family, and business levels. The study explores how these distinct levels interact to influence family firms’ strategies for corporate venturing, and how they support the long-term sustainability and innovation capabilities of the firm. The contribution of this dissertation lies within the field of family business studies and corporate entrepreneurship. While recent research has emphasized the role of corporate venturing in large corporations, less attention has been paid to its impact on family-owned firms. This thesis bridges that gap by examining how the unique governance structures, values, and dynamics of family businesses influence their approach to corporate venturing across the individual, family, and business levels. Moreover, it extends the discussion to how corporate venturing contributes to entrepreneurial learning and innovation within family firms, ensuring their adaptability and growth in the long term. Theoretically, this dissertation builds on contributions from corporate venturing, family business studies, and entrepreneurship research. Empirically, the focus is on the multi-level analysis of corporate venturing within family firms, examining data from various family business contexts, such as Italian and Chinese family firms. The thesis consists of three essays where the central theme is the exploration of the drivers and manifestations of corporate venturing at different levels. The first essay presents a systematic literature review that maps the existing research on corporate venturing in family firms. It identifies critical gaps in understanding how motives, contexts, and processes shape corporate venturing activities, specifically focusing on the interconnected family, ownership, and business levels. The essay concludes by offering recommendations for future research, particularly highlighting the need to further investigate underexplored areas in the corporate venturing literature in family firms. The second essay focuses on the role of individual motivations and family embeddedness in shaping portfolio entrepreneurial activities within family businesses. Through a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis conducted on a sample of 146 family entrepreneurs in Italy, this study explores the configurational factors that drive family entrepreneurs to engage in multiple ventures. It sheds light on how personal goals and family influences interact to shape entrepreneurial behavior in family firms, contributing to the understanding of portfolio entrepreneurship within the family business context. The third essay examines the influence of social status on corporate venturing activities in Chinese family firms, utilizing data from the Chinese Private Enterprises Survey. This paper investigates how higher social status enhances resource availability and leads to more significant investment in new ventures. Additionally, it explores how family ownership and firm size moderate the relationship between social status and corporate venturing activities, contributing to the literature on corporate entrepreneurship in emerging markets by incorporating socio-economic factors into the analysis of entrepreneurial behavior within family-owned firms.