Tracing the Roots of Constructive Conflict Management in Family Firms

The overlap between family and business systems creates a particular bundle of resources, which is a specific familiness that may determine how family firms positively or negatively manage their conflicts. In this article, we review the current research on conflict management and family firms and suggest theoretical propositions about the influence of familiness in constructive conflict management in family firms. We propose that specific levels of structural, cognitive, and relational dimensions of familiness configure a specific arrangement of resources that we conceptualized as collaborative familiness, which enhances constructive conflict. We discuss the main implications of this conceptualization in terms of its theoretical contributions, further research, and practice.