Why this context matters
Family firms in institutional voids, where formal contracting, specialised markets and reliable infrastructure may be incomplete or costly.
Research branch 03
Family Business Resourcefulness
How family commitment, coordination and adaptive effort may help firms mobilise scarce resources when institutions do not work well.
See the open questions01 / Research framing
The problem and its doctoral foundation.
Connection to the thesis
The third thesis essay introduces Family Business Resourcefulness (FBR) as an emerging construct and distinguishes active resource mobilisation from socioemotional wealth.
02 / Proposed mechanism
Follow the action, step by step.
Void
01Formal support is incomplete
Missing intermediaries, costly contracting or weak infrastructure make ordinary resource acquisition less reliable.
Mobilise
02Family effort coordinates resources
Commitment, trust, shared history and adaptive effort can help assemble generic resources that markets do not supply efficiently.
Boundary
03Specialised needs test the model
Family coordination may not substitute for every specialised asset, professional capability or external perspective.
03 / What the thesis contributes
A foundation to test, refine and challenge.
- Introduces Family Business Resourcefulness as an active resource-mobilisation construct.
- Develops an initial four-item measure intended for further testing and refinement.
- Connects family governance with transaction costs, institutional voids and the resource-based view.
- Separates resourceful action from the family-centred identity and continuity concerns captured by socioemotional wealth.
Evidence boundary
FBR is an emerging construct with an initial measure. The website presents it as a research proposition that requires independent validation—not as an established universal scale.
Useful next design
Priority designs include measurement validation, matched family/non-family samples, multiple respondents per firm and cross-country invariance testing.
Family governanceInstitutional voidsResource mobilisationTransaction costsNon-tradable assetsSocioemotional wealth
04 / Open research agenda
Questions worth building evidence around.
These are invitations for research, not claims that a study is already funded or in the field.
- 01
Can independent studies validate, refine or challenge the proposed FBR measure?
- 02
How does the construct differ across family and non-family firms, countries and institutional settings?
- 03
What can owners, employees, financial records and external assessments reveal together?
- 04
Where does family coordination help with generic assets but constrain access to specialised ones?
05 / Collaboration fit
Who could strengthen this branch?
- Family-business researchers interested in construct development and independent replication
- Family enterprises open to multi-source organisational research
- Cross-country teams comparing institutional environments
- Scholars of governance, transaction costs, institutions or resource orchestration
Build the next study together
A useful collaboration starts with a precise question.
If your question, context, dataset or method intersects with family business resourcefulness, I would be glad to compare ideas. A useful first note names the question, what evidence may be available and what a credible contribution could be.
Source note: this public research summary is grounded in Swapnil Sahoo’s submitted 2024 doctoral thesis. It does not distribute an unpublished paper or imply that every proposed extension is already an active study.