Wei Jing

ENGW 3301
Date: 08/01/2014
Project 2: Critical appraisal

As a business student who is interested in family business, I want to better understand the
current situation about family business in the Asia pacific region, particularly in China. I am
from China and I am going to build my own family business in the future. In addition, I
consider innovation as a critical factor to motivate the performance and productivity of a
company. Therefore, there are two articles I discovered that drew my attention. The first
article, Asian Family Enterprises and Family Business Research, generally introduces the
current situation about family business research and illuminates the fact that there is a huge
opportunity for scholars to conduct more research on the current situation about family
business in the Asian Pacific region. The second article, named How does family
involvement affect innovation in China, specifically argues that family involvement in
boards and management exerts a complex influence on the innovation process in China. The
first article is more of an introduction and report of family business status in the Asia Pacific
region; and the second article focuses on a specific research topic. I am going to compare and
contrast similarities and differences between the two articles in statements and methodology.
Article one is divided into four sections. First, the authors talk about the background of
family business, and then they introduce two main notable trends relevant to family business
studies: one trend is that most of studies focus on Western family enterprises; the other one is
the increased dominance of business approaches and virtual disappearance of family focused
ones (2013). Second, the authors discuss the role of context, what is the perspective, in
family enterprise research. They illustrate that context exert a very critical influence on
family business in Asia Pacific region. Third, the authors describe the variations among
families and the involvement in business, and how these variations affect the performance of
family business. In addition, the authors discuss the five main topics about strategic

management in the family business studies to summarize the current status of family business
knowledge, such as corporate governance, succession, economic performance, resources and
competitive advantage, and entrepreneurship and innovation. Lastly, the authors mention two
recent special issues in family business. Furthermore, they encourage scholars to do more
research about family business in Asian Pacific region.
Article two is divided into six sections. First, the authors introduce their study about how
family involvement affects innovation in China. They suggest that family involvement in
boards tends to enhance the positive relationship between R&D investment and innovation
performance, whereas family involvement in management tends to weaken the positive
relationship. Second, the authors review the previous theory about the family involvement
and innovation. Furthermore, they illustrate three hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: In family firms,
R&D investment intensity is positively associated with innovation performance as measured
by patent count; Hypothesis 2: In family firms, the relationship between R&D investment
intensity and innovation performance is positively moderated by family involvement inboards
of directors; Hypothesis 3: In family firms, the relationship between R&D investment
intensity and innovation performance is negatively moderated by family involvement in
management teams (2012). Third, the authors explain the methodology used to verify the
three hypotheses. They collected data covering technological family-controlled firms in
China. They consider a companys annual number of patents as its innovation performance.
In this examination, they consider annual number of patents as the dependent variable, R&D
expenditure as the independent variable, and family involvement in boards of directors and
family involvement in management as the moderating variables. The authors put the relevant
data into a table to compare the relationships. Also, the authors talk about the results of the
examination. According to the selected data, the authors prove all the three hypotheses are
correct. In addition, the authors talk about research limitations. Lastly, the authors make a

conclusion of this study: types of familial involvement have different impacts on the
relationship between R&D investment and innovation performance.
The authors of article one are Pramodita Sharma and Jess H. Chua. After acquiring a
doctorate at the University of Herdecke, Germany, Pramodita Sharma became the Sanders
Chair and Professor of family business at the University of Vermont. The University of
Vermont provides faculty information, noting, She is amongst the most frequently cited
scholars in family business studies (Pramodita Sharma). Currently Jess H. Chua is a
professor of finance at the Haskayne School of Business. The Haskayne School of Business
provides faculty information about the author, noting, he is the holder of the Professorship in
Family Business Governance. He received the 1999 National Post Leaders in Management
Education Award. In 2002, he received the MBA Society Award for Excellence in Teaching
and Learning (Jess Chua).
The authors of article two are Qiang Liang, Danming Lin, Xinchun Li, Xueru Yang, and
Danhui Zheng. Qiang Liang is an associate professor of management at Shantou University
Business School. He is also a researcher of Chinese family business in the Sun Yat-sen
Business school. He is a member in Academy of Management, which is a professional
organization dedicated to the advancement of management and administration. DanMing Lin
is a professor in business management in Shantou University Business School. Besides, he is
an associate dean at Shantou University. He also is a Vice President in the Chinese Institute
of Business Administration. His current research focuses on strategic issues related to
innovation. Xinchun Li got his PhD of economics at Humboldt University in Berlin,
Germany. Currently, he is a professor of strategy at Sun Yat-sen Business School. The Sun
Yat-sen Business School provides faculty information about Xinchun Li, noting, he was
selected as the National candidate for New century Millions of Talents Project authorized
by Ministry of Human Resources, Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of

Education of the Peoples Republic of China, 2005 (Xinchun Li). Danhui Zheng is a PhD
candidate at the Sun Yat-sen Business School, too. His research currently interests are family
business and entrepreneurship. Xueru Yang is a lecturer at College of Economics &
Management, South China Agricultural University. His research focuses on family business
and entrepreneurship.
It is most likely that the authors of the two articles know about each other and they may
have some similar statements. All of the authors are in the business field and they are
interested in Asian family business. Therefore, they may read each others articles and they
may attend some family business affairs and conferences to communicate their studies with
each others. Additionally, the two articles are about family business, and the two articles are
not only from the same journal, and were published in adjacent years. The two articles were
published on Asia Pacific Journal of Management by Springer Science+Business Media New
York online in 2012 and 2013. This journal describes some management and organizational
researches in Asia Pacific region. Most academic journals publish special issues on one topic,
where all the articles talk about the same things. In article one, the Dr. Sharma and Dr. Chua
mentions that In 2012, as part of celebrating the 25
th
anniversary of Family Business
Review, two Special Issues were produced. The first issue provided an overview of the field
from different perspectives. The second issue focused on the variety of methods and
measures to capture the value creation and performance of private family enterprises (2013).
Article one follows the first issue because it describes the current situation of Asian family
business and advocates Asian perspective. Article two focuses on the second issue, because it
explains a method to prove how the family enrollment affects relationship between R&D
investment and innovation performance in Asian family business. Lastly, Dr. Sharmas and
Dr. Chuas studies are cited in article two, which means Dr. Sharma and Dr. Chua are well
known in family business field. For example, in article two, Dr. Sharma and Dr. Chuas

statements from Defining the family firm by behavior were cited to clarify the some firms
owned by a nuclear family as family business.
Despites the authors of the two articles may have similar statements, there are some
differences between their perspectives which illustrate their purposes of writing. They have
same topic about family business, however, they focus on different aspects. Dr. Sharma and
Dr. Chua are professors in the family business field. They follow the March issue to provide
the Asian perspective to contribute to family business overview. They state Asian family
business is important to contribute the global family business research in article one.
However, the authors of article two concentrate more on innovation and entrepreneurship in
Family business. They follow the September issue to provide a method to prove their
assumptions. They utilize a method to argue family involvement in boards and management
exerts a complex influence on the innovation process. For example, the authors cite the
statement about agency costs from Jensen, M. C. and Meckling, W. H. to illustrate in the two
articles. However, the purposes of the same citation are different. In article one, the authors
introduce the principal-agent conflicts which are the interest conflicts between boards and
management by citing this study. The aim of this citation is to talk about the current status of
knowledge about corporate governance, which is one of five most studied topics in family
business. The authors want to introduce the corporate governance standing by Asian
perspective to fulfill family business overview. On the contrary, the authors cite the same
study from Jensen, M. C. and Meckling, W. H to explain the family involvement in boards
and management can reduce the principal-agent conflicts in article two. It is a critical hint to
introduce the three hypotheses. The purpose of the citation in article two is to introduce the
family involvement in boards and management, which is the moderating variable in the
examination to measure the relationship between R&D investment and innovation
performance.

The authors thesis statement is that Asia Pacific region offers some promising
opportunities for the future research about family business. The thesis statement is not
explicit in the article, because the authors use a report method to construct this article. The
authors just explain the current situation and knowledge of family business. First, the authors
explain the critical role of context in family business research. They cite some studies and
materials about how context is important to family business research. For example, the
authors cite the statement from Saxena to explain the contextual changes in the Indian
political and legal environment after the countries independence from British in 1947. The
contextual changes help scholars to understand the formation and growth of large family
business groups in India. Second, the authors explain the conflicts between the business
management and the family involvement in Asia Pacific region. Third, the authors explain
the five common topics in family business research. For example, authors use a statement
from Goel et al. to explain ownership and management are separated in the business
operation to improve the benefit and profit in corporate governance. Corporate governance is
of the five most common topics in family business. Lastly, in the conclusion part, the authors
illustrate the aim of the article is to bring attention to notable trends in family business studies
and point toward that there is a huge opportunity about family business in Asia Pacific region
for future research.
However, I can realize the authors briefly thesis statement obviously from the title of
article two what is How does family involvement affect innovation in China. The authors use
a very obvious method to argue the thesis statement. First, the authors introduce the thesis
statement and their assumption. There are two basic factors in thesis statement, family
involvement and innovation. In the context, the authors introduce four types of family
involvement in a family firm. Family involvement is divided into four types regarding the
involvement in boards and management: professionally managed firm, family managing

model, family monitoring model, and family fully-controlled firm. Besides, in order to talk
about the innovation, the authors introduce the relationship between R&D investment and
innovation performance. Therefore, the authors assume that family involvement in boards
tends to strengthen the positive relationship between R&D investment and innovation
performance, whereas, family involvement in management tends to weaken the relationship
specifically. Second, the authors introduce the examination to prove their assumption.
For example, the authors collect 2005-2007 data covering technological family-controlled
firms. According to Dr. Chin, patent frequency represents an externally validated measure of
technological novelty and research output. The authors use annual number of patents as
dependent variable in this examination to present the innovation performance. Finally, the
authors discuss the results of the examination and make a conclusion of this research.
Therefore, the method of article two is more obvious than that of article one.
According to the theses statements of the two articles, both of them focus on the same
topic about family business in Asia Pacific region. Article one focuses on family business at a
general perspective, and article two argues a specific assumption in family business.
However, article one just reports the current status of family business in an inexplicit method.
And then article two talks about an examination to prove the authors assumption in a very
obvious method. Therefore, I consider article one as an introductory article to report the
current statue of family business studies. The authors point toward that there is a huge
opportunity to do more research about family business in Asia Pacific region. In addition, I
think article two is a typical research article about a measure to argue the assumptions. The
authors successfully prove family involvement in boards strengthen the positive relationship
between R&D investment and innovation performance, whereas family involvement in
management weaken this relationship.
In my opinion, there are some weaknesses of the examination in article two. First, the

authors use 2005-2007 data from technological family-controlled firms. I think they should
use the data not only from the technological family-controlled firms and also from general
family-controlled firms, such as international trade business firms, public accounting firms.
They need to use the data from different firms to make the examination more reasonable.
However, if they consider the business firms as a part of the data, they could not use the
annual patents to present the innovation performance, because some business firms dont
have patents. Maybe they can consider the number of new services or the number of new
product as innovation performance. Second, they consider the annual number of patents as
the innovation performance, however, we can also consider the annual number of new
innovation programs or new product lines as a part of innovation performance.
Both of the two articles are about the family business in Asia Pacific region. They have
the same aim what is to support more information and statements for future research in order
to explore the knowledge of family business, particularly in Asia Pacific region. Also they
exert a critical impact on the development of family business. Specifically, article one points
toward some opportunities about family business in Asia Pacific region. It is very helpful to
the scholars who are interested in the family business and Asia family business to clarify their
thought and confusion. It could be an introduction article for scholars to lead the direction of
their researches and studies. Authors analyze the two main trends in family business studies.
By analyzing the two trends, authors states two opportunities for the future studies. In
addition, authors described the five main topics in the family business studies to summarize
the current status of family business knowledge. This would be very important to the
researcher and scholars. In addition, article two encourage and inspire the scholars to use
various methods and measures to capture the creation of value and performance of family
business. Article two exerts a critical effect not only on the family business in Asia Pacific
region and also on innovation. It tactfully creates a relationship between innovation

performance and R&D investment.
In conclusion, by comparing and contrasting the similarities and different between the
two articles, I learned much knowledge about family business. I can better understand the
current situation about family business in the Asia pacific region, which is beneficial to build
up my own family business in the future. For example, I learned family involvement in
boards exert an impact on the positive relationship between R&D investment and innovation.
This study will be very critical to enhance the performance and productivity of my future
family business. Additionally, I learned how to communicate with other in business field.
There are multiple methods I can use to communicate my study in writing in the future. In the
two articles, the authors cite many previous studies in family business field to support their
claims and ideas, which is one of learning goals in my advance writing class.









Reference
Chua, J., & Sharma, P. (2013). Asian family enterprises and family business research. Asia
Pacific Journal of Management, 30, 641-656.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10490-013-9350-z
Jess Chua, Ph.D. (n.d.). [Faculty Bio]. Retrieved from
http://haskayne.ucalgary.ca/profiles/jess-chua

Liang, Q., Li, X., Yang, X., Lin, D., & Zheng, D. (2012). How does family involvement
affect innovation in China? Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 30, 677-695.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10490-012-9320-x
Pramodita Sharma, Ph.D. (n.d.). [Faculty Bio]. Retrieved from
http://www.uvm.edu/business/?Page=profile.php&id=425
Xinchun Li, Ph.D. (n.d.). [Faculty Bio]. Retrieved from
http://bus.sysu.edu.cn/EN/Teacher/ShowTeacher.aspx?tid=223