The role of family’s identity to achieve competitive advantages: the group level perspective in the strategic decision making process of family firms

Succession, governance and strategic decision making process remain major issues for families in business and we should keep our attention on the big question of what has allowed today’s family business to manage transition, and developed strategies are related to their own personal truths and values related to the family level. More specific, we base our consideration on the assumption that family firms are different compare to non family firm because in those firm we can found four level of analysis instead of the three that we face in other firms: individual level, group level, family group level, and organization level. In fact, family involved in the business is a special form of group - it is a team - that have highly defined tasks and roles and demonstrate high group commitment. Coherently with this assumption, the aim of this conceptual paper is to understand which factors are specific at the family group level in order to explain the family firm identity and what is its role in the explanation of the family firms’ success or fail. Thus, the paper deals with researches on strategic decision making and the variables that influence them.