Non-family employees' perception of familiness, identification, commitment and customer service in a large family business

Abstract

Familiness has emerged as a central theory in the family business field yet little research has addressed how familiness impacts non-family employees and organisational performance in large private family firms. This study investigates non-family employee organisational identification and commitment, how these constructs are influenced by familiness and how they contribute to organisation performance in terms of customer service. A questionnaire based survey yielding 354 responses was conducted in a large fourth generation private family business. The multi-level latent variable constructs and their relationships were analysed simultaneously using partial least squares structural equation modelling to determine the relationship significance and scale of influence. Familiness was found to have a significant relationship with non-family employee organisational identification, commitment and customer service. The structural model explained a large percentage of the latent construct's variance and had strong statistical power, relevance and predictability. Organisational identification emerged as the most important factor in the proposed model as it was most influenced by familiness and displayed the largest effect on customer service. The findings indicate that the higher organisational performance outcomes often attributed to family firms may predominantly be the result of the familiness resources developing stronger emotional attachments and organisational identification in employees.