Analysis of the relationship between sources of knowledge and innovation performance in family firms

This paper has two objectives related to two gaps identified in the literature. The first objective is to extend research on the impact of using different knowledge sources on the innovation performance of firms in the family business context. The second objective is to study the moderating effect of family characteristics on these relationships. We adopted items from Community Innovation Surveys to collect data on Spanish family firms. Our results primarily show a positive effect of internal and collaboration sources on firms’ innovation performance specifically with respect to innovations that are new to the firm. Regarding the moderating effect of family characteristics on the relationship between the use of knowledge sources and innovation performance, the results suggest that CEO tenure, CEO founder duality and family involvement exert negative moderating effects. Thus, the family firm dimension tends to attenuate the positive effects of using various types of knowledge sources on innovation performance.