What is Proactiveness

As a predominant form of business organization, family firms have attracted increasing attention by scholars, and especially by those researching entrepreneurial orientation with the aim of better understanding of entrepreneurial activities pursued by enterprises. However, the literature on the confluence of entrepreneurial orientation and family firms has paid scant attention to the influence of affective and emotional factors. To cover this research gap, the authors analyze the impact of affective commitment and concern for socioemotional wealth preservation on entrepreneurial orientation. To do so, they performed an empirical study using the data collected from 342 small and mid-sized family firms from Portugal, a country where family firms are under-researched even though they make up the backbone of the economy. Results show that both affective commitment and socioemotional wealth positively impact entrepreneurial orientation, pointing to the need to further research the relationships between such factors and strategic behaviors in the family business context.