Small Family Firms and Strategies Coping the Economic Crisis: The Influence of Socio-emotional Wealth

In this chapter, the socio-emotional wealth perspective is used to understand how, during phases of economic recession, a company’s family nature can influence its decision-making processes and the implementation of an ambidextrous strategy, as well as its effectiveness. A qualitative analysis based on a case study is presented in this chapter. The analyzed case involves an Italian family-owned small business that faced the recent economic crisis adopting a mix of defensive and offensive strategies. Thanks to this balanced—ambidextrous—strategy, the company was able to limit the impact of the crisis and then to recover positive profit margins. This study contributes to the extant literature by shedding light on how the aim of preserving socio-emotional wealth can influence small family firms’ ability to adopt ambidextrous strategies in order to face an economic recession.