CEO satisfaction and SME innovation: unveiling the role of family involvement

Family involvement in SMEs can affect strategic decisions about innovation. The differences in the innovative behaviours between family and nonfamily SMEs are mostly attributed to socioemotional wealth, which emphasizes the noneconomic goals of family firms. The literature on how family involvement affects firm innovation remains inconclusive. In this study, we distinguish the different steps of innovation and use CEO satisfaction with business performance to show that greater family involvement is ultimately good for innovation performance. We examine how CEO satisfaction with business performance affects firm innovation and, in particular, how family involvement affects this relationship. Using a sample of 308 Czech SMEs and multiple mediation and moderated mediation analyses, we find that high levels of family involvement enhanced SMEs innovation performance by strengthening the influence of CEO satisfaction on product innovation.