Signaling Family Firm Identity

Sandra Wolf develops a better understanding of the importance of clearly communicating family influence. She examines the efficacy of brand elements that signal family influence and that help external stakeholders to identify a family firm. An experiment with 543 students in Germany and Switzerland is carried out to empirically test the derived hypothesis. The results highlight two important findings. Firstly, the importance of a family firm tagline as well as the family name as brand elements are able to signal 'family firm' and this helps potential employees to immediately categorize the potential employer. Secondly, a positive relationship between the identification of a family firm and applicant attraction was confirmed as to that the relationship is serially mediated by perceived brand authenticity and perceived benevolence.

Dr. Sandra Wolf wrote her dissertation under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Andreas Hack at the Witten Institute for Family Business (WIFU) at Witten/Herdecke University.