Boards of Directors in Family Businesses: A Literature Review and Research Agenda

This paper offers a review of the theoretical and empirical literature addressing boards of directors within the unique organizational setting of family businesses. By reviewing and structuring past research, this paper aims to improve the understanding of how family involvement in firms affects the roles and behaviours of boards. The review of the literature is structured according to the family business board's two primary tasks as an internal administrative body, namely the exercise of control and the provision of advice. For both board tasks, theoretical perspectives and the match between theory and empirical findings will be discussed. The review concludes by offering an integrative discussion of the relevant theories and by highlighting the need for multi‐theoretic, process and contextualized approaches in future research on boards of directors in family businesses.     

Green Care Farms Promote Activity Among Elderly People With Dementia

In the Netherlands, an increasing number of green care farms are providing day care to community-dwelling elderly people with dementia. Currently, it is unknown whether activities, activity participation, and facility use of elderly people with dementia at green care farms differ from those at regular day care facilities. The authors performed group and individual observations at 11 green care farms and 12 regular day care facilities. Activities of elderly people at green care farms were more frequent, occurred outdoors more often, were of a higher physical intensity, and more often were aimed at individuals than activities at regular day care facilities. Therefore, the green care farms’ environment may be more beneficial for elderly people with dementia than the regular day care facility environment.     

Innovation Systems and Systems Development:Lessons from History and Prospects for the Future

This paper addresses the question"What drives economic growth from a socio-technical perspective".It discusses the concept of"innovation system",especially at the national level,and its three components:actors and factors,interrelationships and dynamics.Historical examples will be given from eighteenth century England(especially the Watt-Boulton steam engine firm)and the late nineteenth and early twentieth century USA(especially the contribution of Thomas Edison).Lessons are drawn for China,focusing on Harbin Development Zone.A broader involvement of Chinese society and sustainable engineering are suggested to be conditional for further socio-economic growth.     

Romantic Relationship Commitment and Its Linkages with Commitment to Parents and Friends during Adolescence

This five‐wave longitudinal study examines linkages between adolescents' perceptions of romantic relationship commitment and the development of adolescents' perceptions of commitment to parents and friends. A total of 218 early‐to‐middle adolescents (39.0 percent boys) and 185 middle‐to‐late adolescents (30.8 percent boys) participated. Multivariate growth curves showed that higher base levels of commitment and a stronger positive development of commitment to parents and friends were associated with higher levels of later commitment to romantic partners. The effects were equally strong in early‐to‐middle adolescence and middle‐to‐late adolescence. Also, commitment to parents and commitment to friends were associated equally strong to romantic relationship commitment. No gender differences were found regarding these linkages. Overall, this study shows the importance of parents and friends for boys and girls regarding committed romantic relationships. The results support the idea of one stable and general working model used in different types of relationships.     

Index of Authors Volume 50, 2000

Authors Index

Index of Authors Volume 50, 2000     

The managerial implications of networking

Recent years have shown a proliferation of publications about interaction and networks. All in all, these articles and books tend to focus on the formulation of theory and hypotheses. Despite the relevance of further development of theoretical thought, managers display more interest in scientifically-based recommendations with direct practical relevance. Wim Biemans presents the findings of an in-depth analysis of seventeen cases of new product development in the Dutch medical equipment industry by discussing eight critical success factors related to networking. He maintains that, while the existence of networks offers great opportunities to management, the practice of networking involves some serious potential pitfalls and problems as well. The conclusions are summarized by The Five C's of Innovation Management.“Marketing can be seen as relationship management: creating, developing, and maintaining a network in which the firm thrives”(Gummesson).     

Knowledge management challenges in new business development: Case study observations

This paper's focus is on the knowledge management challenges that come along with technology-based new business development (NBD). NBD thrives upon the exploration of knowledge, under radical uncertainty. Furthermore, existing knowledge may both enable and constrain the radical innovation process. These characteristics make the dominant approach of knowledge management – focusing on codifying, collecting and distributing knowledge – unsuited for NBD. We suggest that knowledge management can enhance NBD by focusing on experimenting, monitoring and integrating knowledge. This is illustrated by case study observations of radical innovation processes.     

Fitting Management Control Systems to Competitive Advantage

Recent publications suggest that existing management accounting and control systems prevent business unit managers realising their desired competitive advantage. Although the concept of competitive advantage has already been thoroughly discussed in strategy literature, it has not yet been integrated in the management accounting and management control frameworks. Only a limited number of researchers have concentrated on contingency research in this area. Contingency theory simply states that organization structure, process and management control systems are contingent upon various internal and external factors, such as industry, technology, size, culture and strategy (Anthony and Young, 1988; Anthony et al., 1992). This article is an attempt to identify and investigate the management control – strategy relationship. We report the results of our exploratory field research in 18 companies (32 business units). Based on our results, we formulate some hypotheses on the observed characteristics of the management control process in case of low-cost strategy, differentiation strategy in a standard product environment and differentiation strategy for customized products (make to order, engineer to order).     

Joint and Separated Lifestyles in Couple Relationships

A survey among 1,523 married and cohabiting couples in the Netherlands is used to describe the extent to which couples have lifestyles characterized by separate leisure pursuits. Four types of leisure are examined: visiting friends and family, entertainment, outdoor recreation, and indoor leisure. For these activities, we find that contemporary couples cannot be characterized as highly individualized. Next, we analyze why some couples have a more separated lifestyle than others. Hypotheses are developed about the life cycle of the couple, the couple's work life, social and cultural homogamy, and value orientations. Multivariate analyses show that life cycle factors are an important determinant of separate lifestyles, whereas evidence for the role of values and homogamy is modest. We also present evidence revealing the time constraints that children and work schedules pose for realizing a joint lifestyle, but we do not find that spouses in dual‐earner couples generally operate more separately than do other couples.