Growth Outlook for Family Businesses under Uncertainty

Project title:

Growth Outlook for Family Businesses under Uncertainty: An Exploratory Study of the Local Business Community in South West London

“This project is expected to tease out new insights about the dynamics of small family businesses, how they interact with the local social economic fabric.”

Researchers:

Project proposal:

Cross-national studies show that family businesses generate almost a third of the national income globally. Within UK, an estimated five million family businesses are under serious risk of market exit following double-edged uncertainty of Brexit and the pandemic (IFB Report, 2020). Moreover, small businesses have taken the hardest hit (Institute for Government, 2020; Simply Business, 2020). Under the backdrop of such an uncertainty-driven external environment, the proposed research project aims to understand the resilience of (small) family businesses in South West London and investigate the complex interaction of these businesses with their external environments. South West London, due to the presence of a rich and diverse socio-cultural community is a natural empirical testbed to investigate how these businesses are adapting to the new challenges while value-preserving their traditional socio-emotional wealth.

The research will build upon and extend the applicants’ extensive experience in studying firm-level dynamics using mixed methods (e.g., Diebolt, Mishra & Parhi, 2016). Using both survey and semi-structured interviews, the project is expected to tease out new insights about the dynamics of small family businesses, specifically how they interact with the socio-economic fabric of their local community. The project is expected to initiate intensive knowledge exchanges between academia, business community/industry and policymaking.

Photo by Ewan Munro on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Themes: