Absorptive Capacity in Family Firms : A quantitative study on Absorptive Capacity, R&D activities and patents in Family Firms

Background: Absorptive capacity concept has its roots dated back around 30 years ago when two seminal papers were published. During the years, more knowledge has been produced about this topic. However, most of the studies have focused on the absorptive capacity from a general point of view without correlating it with the R&D activities of family firms and family involvement. Purpose: This study investigates how one of the distinctive characteristics of family firms (i.e. family involvement) plays a role along with R&D activities carried out either in-house or from external sources, in filing for a patent. Method: To conduct our study we adopted a quantitative approach and used secondary data about 14759 firms located in EU. Considering the type of selected variables, for our analysis we used logistic regression in order to see if the model we proposed was meaningful or not. Conclusion: The findings from our study address the research questions we formulated at the beginning. As for the R&D we conclude that family firms take more advantage from carrying out in-house R&D activities rather than R&D from external sources, matching with what claimed in the existing literature. Furthermore, our study matches with recent studies that challenge the traditional view of family involvement negatively related to innovation