Examining relationships among family influence, family culture, flexible planning systems, innovativeness and firm performance

•We study the role of family influence and family culture.•We integrate upper echelons perspective, schematic frameworks and RBV.•We increase the understanding of the intangible resource base of families in business.

The purpose of this article is to draw on the resource-based view of the firm and the upper echelons theoretical perspective to position family influence, family business culture and flexible planning systems as drivers of firm innovativeness, and subsequently firm performance. We establish these relationships using SEM statistical techniques to analyze responses of small- to medium-sized family businesses using established survey instruments. We find evidence that family influence positively influences family culture, that family culture improves the ability of families to be strategically flexible and that this flexibility positively impacts firm innovativeness, subsequently benefitting firm performance. The implications for practitioners are discussed.