Entrepreneurship in family firms: What’s next? Multilevel embeddedness and individuals’ cognition

Abstract

This special issue contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship in family firms by leveraging the family embeddedness perspective. In doing so, the papers of the special issue bridge entrepreneurship at firm level with analyses at the individual and the enterprising family levels. Starting from and extending such contributions, in this introductory article we offer a “multilevel” embeddedness perspective on entrepreneurship in family firms. We do so first by considering that, in family firms, each individual's cognition ultimately depends on whether they belong to the enterprising family, and whether and how they are active in the family business. Second, we advance that individual entrepreneurial orientation is a key cognitive factor resulting from the multilevel embeddedness and bridging it with entrepreneurship at firm level. We derive theoretical implications for entrepreneurship in family business and highlight avenues for future research.