Purpose

This study explains how managers in family-owned real estate firms achieve flexibility in orchestrating their resources under conditions of uncertainty.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper draws on a single-case design, utilizing 21 interviews with top managers and archival material from 18 Swedish family-owned real estate firms to capture how the phenomenon of resource orchestration (RO) unfolds under uncertainty.

Findings

The results reveal how the family phenomenon can be understood as a key driver of the family firm’s RO mechanisms, shaping the RO activities of its managers.

Originality/value

Three distinct RO configurations of family firm managers are identified: (1) flexible network structuring, (2) incremental flexibility and stakeholder-focused bundling and (3) cautious and societal flexible leveraging. These configurations explain how the family dimension enables the manager’s RO flexibility under conditions of uncertainty.

Objectives – the purpose of this paper is to explore how family-owned real estate firm managers entrepreneurially orchestrate their resources to enable firm strategy in an environment characterized by uncertainty. Literature – based on the seminal work of Sirmon et al. (2007, 2011) on resource orchestration (RO), this study advances the research of Chirico et al. (2011), among others, on how the family dimension influences family firm managers' RO for strategic enabling.Approach – this paper draws on a case study using 21 interviews with family firm managers and archival data from family-owned Swedish real estate firmsResults – The results indicate how the family dimension in family-owned real estate firms influence family firm managers’ strategic RO.Implications and Value - Three family-based strategic enabling mechanisms and their underlying microfoundations are identified, explaining how real estate family firm managerial RO configurations are shaped: (1) flexible network structuring, (2), incremental flexibility and tenant focus bundling, and (3) cautious and societal flexible leveraging. The manifestation of these RO configurations highlights how managers of family-owned real estate firms can facilitate firm strategy in conditions of economic uncertainty.

During the past decades, explanation of capital structures through firm-specific performance variables has increasingly drawn the attention of researchers (for example Kester, 1986; Friend and Lang,1988; Titman & Wessels,1988; Rajan and Zingales,1995: Wald,1999: Ozkan,2001; Zou & Xiao, 2006). In fact, the researchers have attempted to explain how selected firm-specific performance variables - often drawn from the context of annual reports - have affected the outgrowths of various capital structures. The resulting capital structures have often been used to make either comparisons between the two sets of companies or explaining the changes of capital structure over time. However, a focus on the processes of these researches reveals that for the studies of capital structures different methods were applied. In addition to this, the choice of variables was not methodologically reasoned. As a consequence, explanations of the outgrowth of the capital structures appeared being highly ambiguous and paradoxical. This study examines the problem attached to the choices and definitions of variables. It has the intension to demonstrate that rules applied for the selection, definitions, and measurements of the variables are the main causes to the ambiguous and paradoxical results of the past research on capital structure. By reviewing a number of prior empirical researches, this study reveals some inconsistency arising from the failure to apply a common rule in definitions, selections and measurement of the variables.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand the growth of a quasi-market industry and the distribution of capital generated by the industry’s private companies. Methodology: Using a longitudinal case study approach, descriptive panel data and a regression analysis highlight the development of medium-sized Swedish companies within the personal care assistance (PA) industry. Findings: This study demonstrates a quasi-market growth cycle and how the hierarchical organizational dimension explains key figure differences between the business types of independent firms (undivisionalized) and conglomerate subsidiaries. Originality: This study is the first to reveal that quasi-market conditions open up for broad redistributions of capital to non-related conglomerate-owned industries. Thereby, non-intended industries receive public funding advantages.

Using transactions data on apartment sales in Sweden, and taking in consideration the decision made by Swedish Riksbank, we examined the effect of mandatory mortgage amortization on apartment prices. In addition, we examined the effect on apartment demand preferences. For this purpose, we created indices of apartment prices using traditional hedonic models. We applied the spatial model in estimating a zone level apartment price index. With the created indices, we studied the effect on apartment prices by using the traditional panel data method. The propensity score model was used to analyze the effect of the decision on the property prices. We applied different time periods as the event window (quarter, 2 quarters, 1 year, 2 years). Finally, we tested several cut-off time points. We found no effect of the Riksbank decision on apartment prices, however we found a change in apartment preferences.

Accounting principles are a set of ethical constructs that primarily serve to shift accounting towards the locus of ethical judgment. As such, principles help putting the ethical accountability at the “fields” of the entities and provide judgmental relationships or “fit” between ethical consideration and standards as well as various practices of accounting in innumerable ways. However, the current research debates of the ethical issues in accounting have been discursively shaped upon a set of distinctions that researchers make between two sets of dominant standards. These standards are drawn from the contexts of U.S, respectively International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) codifications. This notion should be added that these standards are uncritically defined as being either rules-based or principles-based. In fact, the current accounting debate treats the ethical issues in accounting through the focus on the technical features of the standards. This study will argue that the ethical problem of accounting cannot be adequately approached by the repeated references into the technical natures of the rules-based and principles-based standards. By highlighting the ethical roots of the accounting principles, we will emphasize that analysis of the standards and ethical issues in accounting needs to be judgmentally associated with the propositional promises of the accounting principles.