Revisiting internal market orientation in family firms

Abstract

Firms develop and use multiple strategic orientations. However, few studies have considered more than one strategic orientation, and such studies have paid limited attention to the singular context of family firms, despite the growing evidence of these firms' special strategic behavior. To address these research gaps, we analyze the combined effects of three strategic orientations (entrepreneurial orientation, learning orientation, and market orientation) on family firms' performance by comparing family firms and non-family firms from Spain and Portugal. Our results show differences in the strategic behavior of family firms, but we do not find differences in performance, corroborating the idea of strategic equifinality.