Survey data on organizational culture and entrepreneurial orientation in German family firms

This data article describes a dataset of 208 cases representing assessments of entrepreneurial orientation and organizational culture variables obtained from a web-based survey addressing owners and/or CEOs of German family firms. It includes data on five dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation (innovativeness, proactiveness, risk taking, autonomy, competitive aggressiveness), three dimensions of long-term orientation (futurity, perseverance, continuity), six dimensions of stewardship climate (organizational identification, collectivist orientation, power distance, involvement orientation, use of personal power, intrinsic motivation), three dimensions of learning orientation (commitment to learning, shared vision, open-mindedness), willingness to change, error management culture, and family commitment culture. Additionally, firm-level attributes (e.g., industry, age, size) and top management-level characteristics (e.g., generational involvement, involvement of the founder) are included.


Data
Understanding family firms is an important area of investigation in management research and economics [1]. The German economy is a suitable setting to analyze such businesses, given that it is largely shaped by small and medium sized enterprises ("German Mittelstand"), which are quite often family owned. Equally, many larger corporations headquartered in Germany are controlled by families as well. These firms are often said to be characterized by a specific organizational culture determined by the family in control e a phenomenon, which has not yet been sufficiently understood and which allows for a plethora of research opportunities [2].
Against this background, researchers collected data to illustrate organizational culture and entrepreneurial orientation in German family firms. To aid data collection, a family firm is defined as a privately held firm where ownership resides within one family, where this family is represented in the management team and substantially influences the key decisions and direction of the firm, and the business is perceived to be a family firm by the leading representative of the firm.
The dataset contains self-reported responses of individual study participants. Table 1 summarizes the variables in the dataset. 1 All variables represent either family-, firmor top management-level concepts or attributes that have been assessed by the owner and/or CEO of a particular German family firm (key informant approach). Table 2 Contains the descriptive statistics of the variables in the data set and reports the results of appropriate validity and reliability tests. Value of the data The dataset includes entrepreneurial orientation and organizational culture variables in family firms that may be examined using statistical methods such as linear regression, factor analysis, or structural equation modeling. The data on entrepreneurial orientation in family firms allows for comparisons with other studies in the field and may inform potential meta-analyses. The dataset includes firm-level descriptive attributes such as industry, age, size, and prior performance as well as top management-level characteristics such as generational involvement, involvement of the founder, and CEO tenure. These fields may allow for comparisons of between-group differences from this sample to parallel samples in other similar studies elsewhere.

Experimental design
Whenever possible, the measures contained in the provided dataset were borrowed from prior research. When measures and items for a construct were not available, the items were conceptually derived from profound theoretical conceptualizations. To minimize bias in the responses, the questionnaire included different question formats and scale anchors. Further, it contained reverse coded items to minimize acquiescence bias. Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) was measured as a reflection of five dimensions, namely innovativeness, proactiveness, risk taking, autonomy, and competitive aggressiveness. All items reflecting the individual dimensions were adopted from Covin and Slevin [3], Lumpkin and Dess [4], and Knight [5]. Items for innovativeness, proactiveness, risk taking, and competitive aggressiveness were measured using 5-point semantic differential type scale. For autonomy items, researchers employed a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 "not at all" and 5 "to an extreme extent".
Family commitment culture (FCC) was measured by adopting the family culture dimension of the F-PEC Scale of family influence [6,7] which is based on the family business commitment questionnaire [8,9], thereby however removing two items of the original scale because of their focus on the individual rather than the family level of analysis. Researchers employed a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 "not at all" and 5 "to an extreme extent".
The operationalization of long-term orientation (LTO) was inspired by the conceptualization of Brigham et al. [10]. Researchers measured LTO as a second-order construct reflected by three dimensions: futurity, continuity, and perseverance. For all items reflecting those dimensions, a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 "not at all" and 5 "to an extreme extent" was employed. While the items for continuity and perseverance are entirely new conceptualizations, four of the five futurity items were adopted from Hoffmann et al. [11] based on the work of Covin and Slevin [3].
The stewardship climate (SCL) concept is based on the conceptualization of Neubaum et al. [12] and was measured as a second-order construct reflected by six dimensions: organizational identification, collectivist orientation, low power distance, involvement orientation, use of personal power, and intrinsic motivation. Again, for all items reflecting those dimensions, a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 "not at all" and 5 "to an extreme extent" was employed.
For the concept of learning orientation (LO), researchers relied on Sinkula et al. [13] and employed three dimensions: Commitment to learning, shared vision, and open mindedness. Again, for all items reflecting those dimensions, a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 "not at all" and 5 "to an extreme extent" was utilized.
Finally, to consider an organizational culture orientation toward change and tolerance for failure, the data includes measures on willingness to change [14] and error management culture [15]. Again, for all items reflecting those dimensions, researchers employed a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 "not at all" and 5 "to an extreme extent".

Materials
Survey data was collected via an anonymous self-administered web-based questionnaire addressing the owners and/or CEOs of German family firms. Data is available either as commaseparated values (CSV) (.csv) or in the statistical data format provided by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) (.sav). Furthermore, a Word file contains the full phrasing of the survey items. All files can be accessed via Mendeley Data.

Methods
Relying on the family firm definition provided above, researchers used the Orbis database maintained by Burau van Dijk to identify German family firms. To arrive at the final target population, the following inclusion criteria apply: Only firms headquartered in Germany were selected. Only mature firms, that is, firms that were founded before 1994 and are at least 25 years old, have at least 25 employees, and a revenue of at least V 5 million were considered for data collection. Only those firms in which shareholders are one or more private persons or a family known by name, and in which a shareholder is also a manager, were selected.
The remaining 3,997 firms were cross-referenced with various published directories and individual company websites to ensure the accuracy of the data and identify email addresses. Due to incorrect addresses, firm failures, or firm policies against completing mail surveys, researchers were forced to delete 442 firms from the list which resulted in a final target sample of 3,555 firms. Data collection took place between December 2017 and February 2018 and relied on the key informant approach at the top management level of analysis. An invitation and a link to a web-based survey were sent by email to the owners and/or CEOs of the firms identified. To mitigate ethical concerns in survey research, we aimed at protecting research participants by providing full transparency on the purpose and motivation of the research and ensuring the anonymity of research participants during and after completing the survey (i.e., at no time can conclusions be drawn about the participants or individual statements). After several reminders, the study yielded 404 responses for an initial response rate of 11.4%. However, of those, researchers eliminated responses with missing data. Furthermore, as the questions are related to the perceived strategic focus and culture of the firm, only questionnaires completed by a person in an ownership or top management position were included in the study sample. Moreover, the respondents were asked to classify themselves as being a family business, thereby using two questions: (1) "Are ownership and management control of the company dominated by one family?" and (2) "Do you consider your business to be a family business?". This procedure yielded a final sample of 208 useful responses for an effective response rate of 5.9%.

Transparency document
Transparency document associated with this article can be found in the online version at https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2019.103827.