Think and act like owners in family firms: Does managerial level matter?

Abstract

Conventional thought believes that employees' concern for the firm has never been as great as that of its owners. Making non-owning employees think and act like owners leading to the best performance at work is an eternal challenge for many family firms. We investigate how employees’ sense of belonging attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavior control (PBC) affect their intention and behavior to provide the best performance at work. We also test whether the managerial level (supervisor and above vs. staff and operators) moderates these relationships. Using a moderated mediation model applied to a sample of 409 employees from Indonesian family firms, we find that employees’ sense of belonging, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control (PBC) are positively related to their intention to provide the best performance at work. However, the relationship pattern differs between the two employee groups, namely managerial and non-managerial employees.  For managerial employees (supervisory and above), their PBC has no relationship to their intention or behavior. In contrast, their attitude and subjective norms have a positive relationship with their behavior through their intention. For non-managerial employees (staff and operators), the relationship between subjective norms and behavior is fully mediated by intention. In contrast, the relationship between attitude and behavior and between PBC and behavior is partially mediated by intention. We also find that the effect of attitude on intention is stronger for managerial employees but the effect of subjective norms and PBC is stronger for non-managerial employees.