Opportunity recognition in family entrepreneurship: voluntaristic and deterministic orientations of individual cognitions

This article focuses on the multi-subject opportunity recognition processes in family firms recognizing the mutual impact of individuals and collective cognitions shared by the multiple subjects. In doing so, we propose an interpretative framework based on distinguishing two psychological perspectives: following a deterministic approach, we outline the impact of a collective cognition on individual cognitions of the participants; on the other hand, a voluntaristic approach shows the impact of individuals on collective cognitions in terms of intuition, emotional support, and perception. Specifically, we stress the need of a more voluntaristic approach in family business literature, examining the sources of family members’ heterogeneous individual cognitions. Such differences can be analyzed through the entrepreneurial family vision which encompasses both on a temporal focus prospected future market conditions and the composition of different individual cognitions via a family’s value congruence. We propose that the first element confers a forwarding looking to the prospect on opportunity recognition, while the second one grants to such a prospect a collectively shared understanding.