Testing willingness and ability as distinguishing factors between family and non-family firms: Contextualizing the relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and business performance

The aim of this paper is to examine whether family businesses are different than non-family businesses regarding entrepreneurial self-efficacy and performance introducing a framework by De Massis et al. (2014). This framework claims that firms with expressed ability and willingness (and therefore family-oriented particularistic behavior) are different from firms without those two characteristics. We tested if the presence of ability and willingness affect the entrepreneur’s self- efficacy - firm performance relationship, which explains us more about the differentiation between family and non-family firms and about the contextual (in)dependency of the ESE- business performance relationship. Results show that the presence of willingness and ability in firms distinguishes family and non-family firms regarding entrepreneurial self-efficacy and also business performance. Our results indicate that family firms financially outperform non-family firms.status: publishe