Family Owned Business Institute

Research Scholar's Abstracts 2008 - G. Thomas Lumpkin, Wendy L. Martin

To Develop a Family Orientation Scale
G. Thomas Lumpkin, Wendy L. Martin
2008

The research project involves developing a multi-item scale to assess the dimensions of Family Orientation (FO) set forth in a soon-to-be-published Family Business Review article by G. T. Lumpkin, Wendy Martin, and Marsha Vaughn entitled, Family orientation: Individual-level influences on family firm outcomes. The conceptual article identified five dimensions of family orientationtradition, stability, loyalty, trust, and interdependency.

The task of developing such a scale requires that we: a) conduct an extended literature search to identify prior empirical tests of the five FO dimensions or related dimensions; b) develop a pool of likely scale items to assess FO; c) using pilot testing and judgment tasks, conduct exploratory analyses to identify the items that provide the strongest discriminant and content validity; d) survey individuals working in family businesses using the items identified in c, and variables theoretically potentially related to FO (e.g., BOD membership, succession plans, job satisfaction, financial performance); and, e) conduct confirmatory analyses aimed at establishing construct and criterion-related validity.