How family businesses transfer their values across generation: a conceptual framework

Purpose Recognising the value of sustaining virtuous values in family business across generations, this paper aims to provide a conceptual framework and propose a mediated-moderated mechanism through which family members’ traits, such as family size and parenting style, influence the extent to which family business’s virtuous values transfer across generations. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on systematic literature that was conducted using specific keyword searches in the business source databases of Emerald, ProQuest, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost and SpringerLink. Findings This paper leads to a conceptual framework proposing a mediating relationship between family members’ traits and the transfer of virtuous values to the next generation. Further, two parallel mediators are proposed, moderated by traits of family members’ offspring, such as the age gap and gender of offspring. Research limitations/implications This paper proposes a conceptual framework focusing on transferring virtuous values across generations in the family business. It investigates family members’ traits, such as the size of the family and parenting style, to comprehend the family members’ traits and the transfer of virtuous values relationship. Practical implications The proposed conceptual framework should form the basis of interventions adopted by family business members to enhance the transfer to virtuous values across generations by positively impacting their moral self-efficacy and affective commitment to virtuous values. Originality/value Prior research on family businesses has primarily explored transgenerational succession. However, sustaining virtuous values across generations is equally important to retain a business’s legacy. Very limited scholarly attention has focused on these virtuous values in family business.