| The purpose of the study was to present a model for private family firms to predict the effectiveness of the resources and capabilities provided by family members to build a competitive advantage that leads to higher performance. The author used a resource-based framework to analyze the resources and capabilities that would come from the family system, called familiness.;Participants were owners or board members, upper management team members, or general employees from 52 private first or second generation family firms located in Jalisco State, in Mexico. The study collected 139 valid responses. The author employed a quantitative methodology to analyze six research questions with descriptive statistics, pair sample t-test, independent sample t-test, chi-square, and a structural equation model to determine correlations and regressions among independent and dependent variables.;Analysis revealed that family involvement was the variable with the strongest impact (M/Items = 4.5), then familiness (M/Items = 4.2), followed by legacy and reputation (M/Items = 4.0), and those with the lowest score were professionalization and affective (M/Items = 3.5). Business measurements (level of company sales, level of company profits, number of clients, and level of company debt) presented a moderate increase over the last three years (M = 2.37, M = 2.25, M = 1.41, and M = 1.94, respectively).;The main correlations of the variables included: the gap between familiness and real familiness (r = -.79), ideal familiness and real familiness (r = .37), the gap between familiness and family involvement (r = -.41), real familiness and family involvement (r = .57), the gap between familiness and professionalization (r = -.43), real familiness and professionalization ( r = .54), family involvement and professionalization (r = .53), family involvement and legacy (r = .35), and professionalization and legacy (r = .35). Regression analysis showed that for business measurements 12 percent of the effects can be predicted by real familiness and professionalization; for legacy, 28 percent of the effects can be predicted by professionalization, family involvement, SEW affective, and SEW reputation.;Recommendations for stakeholders suggested: (a) family firms should promote professionalization and institutionalization activities through the inclusion of non-family members into the governance and management boards, formal planning, regularly scheduled meetings, responsibilities definition, performance and control systems, and formal training; (b) high ownership concentration and high family involvement could have a positive outcome for professionalization and legacy; (c) promote activities to increase the awareness of the contribution of individual family members to the organization to increase the sense of commitment to results if other variables are considered, such as the importance of familiness in the construction of the competitive advantage.; and (d) the main elements of familiness that could lead to a higher performance by increasing profits and the number of clients are clear commitment to the company, an ability to turn vision into concrete ideas, and task-orientation . |
