Strategic posture and performance: Revealing differences between family and nonfamily firms

•We introduce small business orientation (SBO) to the literature on family firms.•SBO: a strategic posture that comprises an owner's emotional attachment and personal goals.•We compare SBO and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in family and nonfamily firms.•Results indicate that EO has no significant effect on family firm performance.•Instead, family firms adopting an SBO exhibit significant performance increases.

We investigate two strategic postures, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and small business orientation (SBO), and their relationships with firm performance, revealing significant differences between family and nonfamily firms. We examine EO and SBO in 377 small businesses, finding that EO has a greater impact on the performance of nonfamily firms, whereas SBO drives the performance of family firms. Contrary to research suggesting that family firms should behave more entrepreneurially, our results indicate that this behaviour has no significant effect on family firm performance. Rather, increased performance is found in family firms that adopt a small business strategic orientation.