As an important part of the global economy, family businesses exert significant economic and social influence in many countries, but very few of them are passed on to the third, fourth and subsequent generations. Strategic entrepreneurial behavior is an effective tool for family businesses to break the pattern of short life spans. Enterprises that implement strategic entrepreneurship often show stronger vitality and development potential, and can quickly adjust their strategies, seize opportunities, and create unique competitive advantages in the face of market changes and competitive pressure. Intergenerational involvement is a dynamic process of changing the ownership and management rights from the first generation of founders to the second generation of successors in a family business, which involves the investigation, selection and training of successors, and requires a scientific intergenerational involvement system. Previous studies have focused on the influence of institutional factors such as family governance, professional managers, and familial culture on the strategic entrepreneurial behavior of family firms in the process of intergenerational involvement of family firms. However, since the strategic goal of the family business is not only to obtain economic gains, it must take into account the non-financially oriented family logic, emphasizing collectivity, loyalty and continuity. Additionally, the phenomena of "cronyism" and "circle culture" in Chinese society add complexity to the intergenerational involvement and strategic entrepreneurial behavior of family firms. Merely applying causal symmetry to understand this relationship between intergenerational involvement and strategic entrepreneurial behavior of family enterprises may result in a one-sided view.Therefore, it is necessary to further explore the influence of multiple intergenerational involvement systems on the strategic entrepreneurial behavior of family firms.
From the perspectives of the interaction and symbiotic evolution of the formal system, informal system and strategic entrepreneurship involved in the intergenerational involvement of family firms, this study takes 34 family firms as case samples to analyze the conditional and obstructive factors affecting the strategic entrepreneurial behavior of family firms from a configuration perspective. This study attempts to answer two questions: Can a single element of the intergenerational involvement system drive the strategic entrepreneurial behavior of family firms? What are the intergenerational institutional entities that drive strategic entrepreneurship? The conclusions are as follows: (1) A single condition of the intergenerational involvement system is not a necessary factor to drive the strategic entrepreneurship of family businesses, and the single elements of second-generation multiculturalism, family entrepreneurship,family governance system, leadership identity, and family institution setting are not the necessary conditions for improving strategic entrepreneurial behavior, and the complex combination of multiple conditions in the intergenerational involvement system is the effective path to improve strategic entrepreneurial behavior. (2) There are three configurations that lead to high-strategic entrepreneurial behaviors, which can be summarized as the triple helix driven by "regulation-cognition-norm", the four-dimensional drive of "regulation-norm-cognition-identity", and the coupling type of formal system and informal system substitution.
This study explores the linkage effect of different subdivisions of the intergenerational involvement system of family firms on the strategic entrepreneurial behavior of family firms,offering three key contributions: First, it addresses gaps in existing research by analyzing strategic entrepreneurial behavior through the lens of intergenerational involvement, moving beyond prior focus on individual traits (e.g., gender or cultural background of successors), and thus it enriches the research on the influencing factors of strategic entrepreneurial behavior of family firms. Second, from the configuration perspective, this study empirically explores the synergistic driving effect of five key factors at the two levels of formal system and informal system of intergenerational involvement of family firms on strategic entrepreneurial behavior, which is a useful supplement to the existing literature. By revealing three driving paths of strategic entrepreneurial behavior of family firms, this paper opens the "black box" of the research on the driving mechanism of strategic entrepreneurial behavior, and further reveals the differences between the driving mechanisms of strategic entrepreneurial behavior among different family firms. Third, the findings suggest actionable strategies for family firms, including adopting best practices, innovating formal systems (e.g., succession planning), and leveraging informal systems (e.g., trust-building) to enhance entrepreneurial outcomes.