About
Melanie Richards has been an Associate Professor at the TUM School of Management since March 2022. She holds the Chair for Family Business Culture and Ownership, endowed by the EQUA foundation and located at the Munich Campus.
Her research focuses on how the values and identity of founders and owner-managers affect strategic decision-making and entrepreneurship. Melanie Richards’ work seeks to understand how founders and owner-managers’ sense of purpose and responsibility drives their entrepreneurial priorities, defines how they legitimize themselves in controversies, and determines how they resolve the tensions between conformity, compliance and distinctiveness. This is mostly studied in the context of current major environmental and social challenges and technological shifts. Her work also explores how founders and owner-mangers are evaluated and how for instance a family branding is perceived by external evaluators in different contexts.
Prior to joining the TUM School of Management, Melanie Richards was Associate Professor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Bath. She also worked for the University of Bristol as Assistant Professor in Management and for the University of St. Gallen as Postdoctoral Researcher at the Swiss Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship after receiving her PhD in Management from the University of St. Gallen in September 2015. As part of her PhD education, she spent 12 months as Visiting Scholar at Bayes Business School in London. Prior to her academic career, Melanie Richards gained experience as a consultant working for PwC Management-Consulting in London.
Areas of Interest
- Purpose and Responsibility of New Ventures and Owner-Managed Firms
- Entrepreneurship & Strategy
- Legitimacy & Social Evaluation
- Environmental & Social Challenges
- Disruptive Change & Innovation
Awards
- Family Business Review (FBR) Excellent Reviewer Award (2023)
- Family Business Review (FBR) Excellent Reviewer Award (2022)
- IFERA Best Paper Award (2021)
- Family Business Review (FBR) Best Article Honorable Mention (2020)
- The Academy of Management, nominated for Carolyn Dexter Award (2014)
- IFERA, finalist for Roleski Best CSR Research Paper Award (2014)
- The Academy of Management, Best Paper Proceedings (ENT) (2014)
- Konferenz der deutschsprachigen Forschungszentren und Institute für Familienunternehmen, Best Paper Award (2014)
- The Academy of Management, Distinguished Reviewer Award (ENT) (2013)
- IFERA Best PhD Research Proposal Award (2013)
Selected Current Research Projects
Social Evaluation and Legitimizing Strategies – How are founders and owner-managers evaluated by different firm internal and external stakeholders? What are owner-managers’ reputation and legitimization strategies? How do they tackle potential controversies?
Identity Types and Strategic Priorities – What are the different identity types of founders, next generation family owners, and current owner-managers? How do identity types help to explain entrepreneurial priorities? How do they relate to philanthropy?
Strategic Responses to Environmental and Social Challenges – How do founders and owner-managers react to changes in the regulatory landscape related to sustainability? How do they define the firm’s purpose and responsibility in light of environmental and social challenges? How do owner-managers use the firm’s legacy and collective memory to inform the firm’s future?
Key Publications
- Hsueh, J. W. J., & Richards, M. (forthcoming). Business Groups after Incidents of Wrongdoing: Exploring the Effectiveness of Differentiated Versus Aligned Impression Management Tactics. Journal of Management Studies. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13186
- Richards, M (2023). When do Non-financial Goals Benefit Stakeholders? Theorizing on Care and Power in Family Firms. Journal of Business Ethics. 184(2), 333-351.
- Richards, M., Kammerlander, N. and Zellweger, T. (2019). Listening to the heart or the head? Exploring the “willingness versus ability” succession dilemma. Family Business Review, 32 (4), 330-353.
- Kammerlander, N., König, A. and Richards, M. (2018). Why do incumbents respond heterogeneously to disruptive innovations? The interplay of domain identity and role identity. Journal of Management Studies, 55 (7), 1122-1165.
- Richards, M., Zellweger, T. and Gond, JP. (2017). Maintaining moral legitimacy through worlds and words: An explanation of firms’ investment in sustainability certification. Journal of Management Studies, 54 (5), 676-710.
- Zellweger, T., Richards, M., Sieger, P. and Patel, P. (2016). Exploring the family discount: How institutional logics shape successors’ discount expectations in intergenerational family firm ownership transfers. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 40 (5), 1041-1069.
- Kammerlander, N. and Ganter, M. (2015). An attention-based view of family firm adaptation to discontinuous technologies: Exploring the role of family CEOs’ non-economic goals. Journal of Product Innovation Management (A-ranked, VHB), 32(3), 361-383.