How to Increase Job Satisfaction and Reduce Turnover Intentions in the Family Firm: The Family-Business Embeddedness Perspective

The authors define family-business embeddedness as confluence of values and objectives stemming from the overlapping institutional contexts-family, business, and symbolic-in the family firm. Hence, the family-business embeddedness perspective investigates the effect of integrating divergent institutional values and objectives, economic and noneconomic, on family firm's performance. The authors contend that family-business embeddedness and work centrality will magnify family employees' job satisfaction, whereas superior job alternatives will produce an opposite effect. In turn, job satisfaction will be negatively related to family employees' turnover intentions. A survey of 111 family employees from 70 family firms in the United States supported the hypotheses.