The Walking Dead Strategy – The connection between socio-emotional wealth and entrepreneurial orientation – Systematic literature review

This paper presents the current main research directions and findings concerning the relationship between socio-emotional wealth (SEW) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Based on the results of a keyword search in two academic databases and a snowball method of crawling, the article reviews 69 papers and structures the results in the form of an integrated model with three main dimensions: EO, SEW, and entrepreneurial performance. Contrary to the traditional view of family firms as risk-averse organizations that impose non-economic considerations in their decision-making, even at the cost of foregoing economic benefits, the review shows that the values of SEW can be most effectively protected in the long term by applying an entrepreneurial orientation. The paper proposes a strategy for family businesses with specific examples.