Resource orchestration, socioemotional wealth, and radical innovation in family firms: Do multifamily ownership and generational involvement matter?

We draw from resource orchestration and socioemotional wealth (SEW) arguments to examine radical innovation in multifamily firms. We theorize that the weak coordination mechanism associated with multifamily ownership has a negative effect on the positive SEW-radical innovation relationship. Additionally, we argue that low generational involvement – the number of family generations involved simultaneously in the family firm's top management team – mitigates the negative moderating effect of multifamily ownership. Low generational involvement is a mobilizing mechanism that ensures that the family firm uses its SEW to produce radical innovation. We use a sample of Spanish firms to test our expectations. Our results show that firms realize the positive effect of SEW on radical innovation in concert with the leadership governance mechanism of multifamily ownership and low generational involvement. These results are important in that evidence suggests that radical innovation plays a strong role in family firms' long-term survival, success, and renewal. We conclude our paper with a discussion of the study's theoretical contributions and opportunities for future research. •A family firm’s socioemotional wealth (SEW) is positively related to radical innovation.•Multifamily ownership positively moderates the relationship between a family firm's SEW and radical innovation.•Multifamily firms maximize radical innovation outcomes when the firm’s SEW is high and generational involvement is low.