The Family’s Financial Support as a “Poisoned Gift”: A Family Embeddedness Perspective on Entrepreneurial Intentions

We argue that greater availability of financial support by the family for creating a new venture entails stronger financial and non-financial obligations. Cognizant of these obligations, potential founders anticipate negative performance implications for the planned firm and threats to the family system in the case of their non-fulfillment. We thus postulate that the formation of actual entrepreneurial intentions is less likely the greater the available financial support. We confirm this by studying a sample of 23,304 respondents from 19 countries and find the negative relationship to be dependent on family cohesion and on individual entrepreneurial self-efficacy.

One size does not fit all: Entrepreneurial families’ reliance on family offices

Family offices are organisations dedicated to the management of entrepreneurial families’ private wealth. Based on agency theory, we analyse types of family offices with regard to the families’ goals and the control mechanisms used to ensure goal achievement. Family-dominant management and private client structures involve stronger emphasis on non-financial goals in single and multi-family offices than in non-family-dominant management and open client structures. Variations in family involvement, ranging from family dominance to the complete absence of family ownership and/or management, and diverse client structures justify the differential reliance on formal and informal control mechanisms.

A 5-year follow-up of patients discharged with non-specific abdominal pain: out of sight, out of mind?

Acute non-specific abdominal pain (NSAP) is prevalent in 6-25% of the general population and is a common cause of admission to the emergency department (ED). Despite involvement of substantial financial and human resources, there are few data on long-term outcome after initial diagnosis. The aim of this study was to evaluate long-term outcome of patients initially admitted with NSAP to an ED.