Chapter 6: Organizational Change in Family Firms: The Role of Interpretation and Emotions

The role of emotions is an ongoing stream of research in both family firms and entrepreneurship studies. Emotions represent one of the potential synergies’ sources between the two research fields. Family firms show several strong, distinctive features, such as emotional attachment and judgment that shape the relevant direct relationship between emotions and entrepreneurial behaviors. We argue that three elements could bias organizational changes in family firms. The way family firms read (beliefs) the internal and external environmental dynamics (antecedents) may generate distorted emotions (consequences) and consequentially influence entrepreneurial behaviors. Thus, there is a need to activate a debiasing process. In this chapter, we discuss that through reflection family firms can revise their beliefs, following emotions and resulting behaviors. Adopting a cognitive-behavioral lens, the chapter aims, from a theoretical perspective, to explore factors hindering organizational change and to propose possible indications in overcoming them in family firms.