Understanding multiple family firm identities: An exploration of the communicated identity in official websites

In recent years, family firm identity has been introduced as one of the perspectives to explain how family involvement can result in a source of distinctiveness and competitive advantage for a family business. This paper introduces the idea of multiple family firm identities and explores whether, and if so how, organizations communicate their family firm identity in their official websites. One thousand and thirty-six family firm websites from three countries (Australia: N= 560; US: N=310, UK: N= 166) were analyzed. Results indicate that fifty seven percent of the firms made some reference to being a family firm in their websites. Twenty six percent of the firms used an explicit message strategy and thirty eight percent used an implicit strategy in their communication efforts. Additionally, firm characteristics (i.e., firm age, country of origin, type of industry, and market orientation) were related to how and where organizations communicated they were family firms. Implications for family firms and ideas for future research are discussed. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.