A Natural Fit: Exploring Business-Owning Families’ Antecedents and Approaches to Impact Investing and Social Venturing

Abstract

This dissertation examines the engagement of business-owning families and their members in the fields of impact investing and social venturing, and contributes to three key areas. First, it advances family business scholarship by extending the study of business-owning families beyond the boundaries of the family firm. It highlights their heterogeneous engagement in social endeavors, offering a nuanced understanding of how they balance a hybridity of objectives, both financial and non-financial, based on their unique frame of reference. Second, it contributes to entrepreneurship research by shedding light on how individuals construct entrepreneurial identities in nascent and ambiguous fields such as impact investing, and how they may use their family as a salient social referent to guide their identity construction. Third, it provides new insights into social entrepreneurship and cross-sector collaborations by examining the case of a social enterprise selling the majority of its shares to a large family group. The study identifies how both entities were integrated in ways that helped sustain social impact post-acquisition, informing both scholars and practitioners on structuring mission-driven partnerships. By integrating these perspectives, this dissertation deepens our understanding of business-owning families’ social behaviors, the crafting of entrepreneurial identity in new fields, and the conditions under which social enterprises can maintain their purpose in cross-sector partnerships.