Work-Family Initiatives e Innovazione: Analisi e Confronto tra Imprese Familiari e Non Familiari

The needs and expectations arising from the family life, such as time and space constraints or care for dependents of the employees are nowadays a real issue with many families struggling to balance their family and professional life (European Survey of Quality of Life, 2016). Constraints arising from the conflict between work and family can produce negative effects on companies. To avoid issues such as lack of motivation, absenteeism, lack of commitment or even lack of creative and devoted work, companies are responding with different solutions. The work-family initiatives are, indeed, a voluntary organizational response to address the above stated issues. By offering work-family initiatives, companies show care towards their employees and their non-work concerns and are motivating them to participate more actively and more creatively in the work activities. These initiatives also have a positive effect on organizations as a whole such as improved share prices, overall performance or prevention of knowledge spillover (Arthur, Arthur, 2003; Chen et al., 2013; Flammer et al., 2019). In their literature review of 2016, Seeck and Diehl, point out that human resource practices that foster employee commitment, loyalty, learning and intrinsic motivation are eventually conducive to innovation. As a consequence, the work-family initiatives are expected to also boost the innovation performance of a company. Even though work-family initiatives have been broadly researched by the academic circles (Goodstein, 1994; Osterman, 1995; Milliken et al., 1998; Arthur, 2003; Bloom et al., 2011; Bourdeau et al., 2019), their effect on innovation is still unknow. The literature review reveals at least three important gaps in the existing literature. First, the context of the SMEs is slightly left behind, when discussing the effects of the work-family initiatives. Second, the work-family initiatives have been broadly explored in the context of large companies, however previous studies call for further understanding of the underlying individual-level mechanisms that enable the relationship between work-family initiatives and innovation in large firms. Third, even though the literature has identified that managing the tension between work and family systems is quite intense in the family business context (Beehr, Drexler, and Faulkner, 1997; Foley and Powell, 1997; Lansberg, 1999), it remains fairly silent on how those initiatives are being exploited in family firms. In line with the above revealed gaps, the objective of this thesis is to shed light on the work-family initiatives and their effect on innovation, by exploring them in the context of small and large family and non-family firms. The thesis has the following structure. The introduction is followed by a literature review. Next, I provide three quantitative empirical studies that aim at bridging the gaps explained above. Last, I provide an overall conclusion of the thesis with contributions and avenues for future research.