HR Flexibility in Family Firms: Integrating Family Functioning and Family Business Leadership

ABSTRACT

We developed a conceptual model that links central constructs of family functioning to HR flexibility and subsequent HR outcomes in family businesses. We proposed that family functioning was associated with two fundamental leadership decisions (i.e. family-business integration and family involvement) in family businesses. We posited that family business leaders have immense discretion to make these critical decisions that establish the degree to which the family firms would exhibit HR flexibility. We distinguished the three dimensions of HR flexibility – skill, behavioral, and HR practices flexibility and proposed that skill and behavioral HR flexibility generally lead to positive HR outcomes whereas the effects of HR practice flexibility on HR outcomes would be moderated by whether the employee is a family or non-family employee.

KEYWORDS:

• HR flexibility
• family business
• family functioning
• circumplex model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sanjay Goel

Sanjay Goel is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship at University of Minnesota Duluth. He can be contacted at [email protected]

Lin Xiu

Lin Xiu is an Associate Professor of Human Resource Management at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Lin received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. She can be contacted at [email protected]

Sheila Hanson

Sheila Hanson is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship in the College of Business and Public Administration at the University of North Dakota. She can be contacted at [email protected]

Raymond J. Jones

Raymond J. Jones, III is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategy in the Nelson Rusche College of Business at the Stephen F. Austin State University. He can be contacted at [email protected]