IFERA 2015 Hamburg

Keynote Speakers

Richard L. Priem – Luther Henderson Chair of Strategic Management and Leadership. Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University
Dr. Michael Frese – National University of Singapore Business School. Leuphana University Lüneburg
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IFERA2015 program starts off with an enriching pre-conference program for doctoral students, junior faculty as well as those interested in attending a professional development workshop. This is followed by a two day academic program feauturing paper presentations, discussion sessions and poster sessions. The last day of the conference invites academics to interact with family businesses in the IFERA2015 Family Business Day. This is the chance for academics to learn new insights from the field and also bounce off their concepual ideas in engaging conversations with family business leaders and members.
Final Program (pdf)
Conference Venue: Handelskammer InnovationsCampus, Adolphsplatz 6, 20457 Hamburg
Registration, Poster Sessions, Lunch and Coffee breaks: Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, Adolphsplatz 1, 20457 Hamburg

Awards

The 2015 IFERA conference announces 9 awards for a total of 15.850 Euros.

#1 IFERA 2015 Best Ph.D. Research Proposal Award (2000 Euros):

IFERA is dedicated to facilitating and promoting the advancement of family business research by encouraging sound, scholarly, and rigorous research practices derived from all accepted methods of inquiry and philosophical traditions. The IFERA Best Ph.D. Research Proposal Competition initiative aims to acknowledge and honour the next generation of family business scholars whose research is deemed to hold significant promise to increase extant knowledge in the broad area of family business.

Deadline: April 30, 2015

#2 IFERA 2015 Best Conference Research Paper Award (2000 Euros):

Best paper will be selected from all the papers presented in the conference. All papers are doubleblind reviewed for inclusion in the program and a select papes will be shortlisted and will be judged (blind) by a jury.

#3 IFERA 2015 Best Conference Paper – Contribution to Practice (2000 Euros):

Conference papers with best contribution to practice will be identified and selected for this award by a blind jury.

#4 IFERA 2015 Best Paper on Conference Theme (1500 Euros):

Best papers on IFEA2015 Conference theme will be identified and selected by a blind jury.

#5 IFERA 2015 Best Conference Paper Award for the First-Time Presenter (1000 Euros):

Best papers by a first-time presenter will be selected by a jury.

#6 IFERA 2015 Best Reviewer (Complimentary Registration for IFERA2016): 

Conference chairs will select the best reviewer.

#7 IFERA 2015 / ROLESKI Best Family Systems Constructs Research Paper/ Case Award (2000 Euros): 

Best paper that contributes to the family systems constructs will be selected by a jury.

#8 Best Emerging Scholar (2000 Euros): 

Award to recognize a new generation of FB scholars whose research is deemed to hold significant promise. Eligibility: Ph.D. graduates between the last 4-7 years and authorship of two A publications and two other papers that are independent of the PhD supervisor and/or mentor.

#9 Best published paper at an IFERA event (3000 Euros)
Family Business Day
Family Business Day 2015 Hamburg is a unique opportunity to interact with family business entrepreneurs and scholars from all over the world. World-class family business entrepreneurs will share their experiences on various aspects of leading and managing a family firm. Their insights will be complemented with reflections from renowned scholars from the field. The day is bookended by a key note speaker with years of experience in studying and guiding family business scholarship and advising family businesses.
Date: Friday July 3, 2015
Topics: Family Business owners will share their experience with topics such as succession, corporate governance and family constitution
Time: 9.30 am – 6.30 pm
Location: Handelskammer InnovationsCampus, Adolphsplatz 6, 20457 Hamburg
Room: 2.04 Perkins
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Hamburg Institute of Family Owned Business
Hamburg Institute of Family Owned Business (Hamburger Institut für Familienunternehmen/ HIF) is an interdisciplinary institute which scientifically explores the economic, business and legal aspects of family owned businesses. HIF has been founded in 2011 by Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI) and Hamburg School of Business Administration (HSBA).
HIF is as a privately funded institute, intending to prove that Hamburg is a city not only with a vibrant community but a place of academic and scietific excellence. HIF’s goal is the generation of insights which aid the family businesses in their daily business activities and their strategic orientation. At the same time the Institutes lays a foundation for potential recommendations addressing the legislator. The excellent, scientific education of the staff, as well as the strong integration into the academic community’s network guarantees outstanding academic work. The practical experience of all HIF researchers gained through industry related jobs and consultancy work is put in a context that creates value for the businesses. Professor Dr. Günther Strunk is the head of Institute and Visiting Professor Entreprenurship and Family Business at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Leuphana University Lüneburg is supporting IFERA 2015.

Call for Papers

Tradition and Innovation in Family Business
The International Family Enterprise Research Academy (IFERA) and the Hamburg Institute of Family Owned Business of the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI) invite you to participate in the IFERA 2015 Conference, to be held in Hamburg, Germany, 30th June to 3rd July, 2015.
The purpose of the conference is to advance family business scholarship by (1) serving as a platform for presentation of carefully crafted contributions seeking to find home in top-tier academic journals, (2) advancement of papers that need further development in order to make a meaningful contribution, (3) testing of new ideas and plans that will benefit of advice from other members of the IFERA family and our distinguished quests, and (4) raising of new and relevant questions concerning family business.
Highlighting the role of IFERA as a bridge between intellectual framings and praxis of family business, the annual conference brings together business families and scholars to identify and advance best practices in the family business. Policy issues are not ignored either. Finally, with the IFERA tradition of having fun, the conference provides an inspiring and a unique atmosphere for networking, bonding, and exchanging ideas.
About the Conference Theme
The Conference invites papers on all aspects of family business research, including but not limited to succession, leadership and governance, entrepreneurship, strategy, family relationships, emotions, family psychology and sociology, economics, finance, and accounting, as well as issues that lie at the intersection of these and other interrelated disciplines. All theoretical and methodological approaches are welcome as we advance the field in a truly multi-disciplinary, creative, rigorous, reflexive, and critical fashion.
In addition, we invite papers that speak directly to the selected conference theme of “Tradition and Innovation in Family Business.”
Tradition and Innovation in Family Business
Family firms can be an exceptional repository of traditional values, beliefs and cultures, as well as products, production techniques and services that are handed down from generation to generation for decades, sometimes centuries. For their long-term survival, family firms need however to continuously renew their competitive advantage by introducing product, process, or organizational innovations.
The nexus of tradition and innovation represents a major opportunity for family firms, but it also entails unique challenges for family firm owners and managers, as well as for professionals and policy makers dealing with family firms. By dedicating the IFERA 2015 theme to “Tradition and Innovation in Family Business”, the Conference particularly invites family business scholars to examine the organizational and managerial implications of the duality between tradition and innovation in family firms. Potential contributions to IFERA 2015 include, but are not limited to, the following questions:
The Family and Tradition/Innovation

• What is the relationship between tradition and innovation? Are they different sides of the same coin, on the same side of the coin, or two different coins?  E.g. does respect for tradition sharpen or hinder innovation?
• How do different academic disciplines help us understand the dimensions, typologies and dynamics of tradition and innovation in families and family firms?
• Are there specific parenting and family management/leadership styles that promote innovation?  How do family pathologies, conflicts, disharmony affect the establishment or destruction of tradition and innovation?
• How may family involvement in ownership, management and governance affect innovation inputs, processes and outputs? Have different generations involved in the firm different impacts on innovation behavior?

The Business and Tradition/Innovation

• What factors influence risk taking, innovativeness, proactiveness and other dimensions of entrepreneurship in family firms? Does the coupling of tradition and innovation facilitate or hinder opportunity identification and exploitation in family firms?

Strategies, performance and environments in relation to Tradition/Innovation

• How do cultures and values affect the open (i.e., collaborative) innovation in family firms? What is the role of myths, ceremonies, “holy cows” and shared meanings within a family in maintaining/reinterpreting tradition and innovation?  Are family firms more or less interested in collaboration to develop innovation activities? How does tradition affect the breath and scope of new knowledge exploration in family firms?
• How does tradition affect the explorative and exploitative innovative behaviors of family firms, and their combination (e.g., dynamic capabilities, ambidexterity)? Do family firms pursue different types of innovation results than non-family firms? Do they prefer more disruptive or radical innovation?
• How do innovative practices unfold or develop across generations?  What is the interplay between the received tradition and freedom to innovate in the successive generation? Reflective studies, or deep process studies spanning generations may be especially welcome on this topic.
• How do tradition and innovation both individually and interactively affect performance in family firms?
• Does tradition affect the appropriability of firm knowledge and inventions in family firms? Do innovative family firms grow more or diversify more?
• How does the broader institutional context promote innovation/tradition in the family business?  What explains the variance in innovative businesses under family governance/control across countries?

In summary, the IFERA 2015 theme “Tradition and Innovation in Family Business” encourages submissions that embrace diverse disciplinary traditions, theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches to (1) advance our understanding of the distinctive opportunities and challenges prompted by the duality between tradition and innovation in family firms, and to (2) help family owners and managers, as well as policy makers and professionals engaged with family firms to effectively manage the nexus between tradition and innovation to build competitive advantages and sustain firm growth and performance across generations.

Committee

Josip Kotlar – Lancaster University
María Jesús Nieto – Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Conference Chair: Prof. Dr. Günther Strunk, Head of Hamburg Institute of Family Owned Business (HIF)
Conference Host Committee
Sara Mercedes Hildenbrand, IFERA 2015 Project Assistant at Hamburg Institute of Family Owned Business (HIF)
Henrik Harms, Junior researcher at Hamburg Institute of Family Owned Business (HIF) 
IFERA
Sanjay Goel, University of Minnesota Duluth (USA)
Gonzalo Gomez Betancourt, Universidad de La Sabana (Colombia)
Ranjan Karri, University of Illinois Springfield (USA)
Torsten Pieper, Kennesaw State University (USA)
Donella Caspersz, UWA Business School (Australia)
Ramona Zachary, City University of New York (USA)
Claudia Binz Astrachan, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts
Julia-Carolin Schmid, University of Witten/Herdecke