Drawing on 62 interviews with 23 family businesses in Cyprus concerning the 2013-2018 (Eurozone) debt crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, this study offers new knowledge on why and how family social capital reconfigures during external crises to support survivability. The findings reveal new psychological and situational mechanisms motivating structural and relational changes in family social capital during crises. However, we find nuances and complexities acting on the motives and content of these changes, attuned to the type of external crisis that the family business faces. We contribute a context-sensitive theory of family social capital’s reconfiguration during external crises.
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Family Business Review and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/08944865221113136. This article has been accepted for publication. Users who receive access to an article through a repository are reminded that the article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. Users may also download and save a local copy of an article accessed in an institutional repository for the user's personal reference. For permission to reuse an article, please follow our Process for Requesting Permission: https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/process-for-requesting-permission