Family firm dynamics and strategic decision-making [Abstract]

East Asian countries, like Malaysia, are seeking to grow out of the middle-income trap (Hodgkinson et al., 2016) and the growth in family firms in Malaysia reflects this desire. Though growing, the body of work on family firms is largely based on firms in Western countries. While insightful, findings in these studies are not directly transferrable to emerging economies. Despite works by Hughes et al. (2018), the literature has not thoroughly investigated decision-making in the emerging economy context. Tsai et al. (2006) note a tendency in emerging economies to favor formal planning but Hodgkinson et al. (2016) demonstrate that improvisation is also on the rise. As a result, this study aims to address the knowledge void in understanding strategic decision-making in emerging economy family firms.