Leadership occurs when one affects others and it is critical to the life of a family because it brings about a higher level of personal involvement on the part of each family member (Davis, 2000:14). The family is a form of organization where members seek inspiration, motivation, and reward as well as individualization (Bass, 1990). Family leadership can be seen as the conscious effort of parents in order to influence social, cultural, economic and political aspirations for the benefit of their children. “It can also be defined as a process of establishing and maintaining an environment in which members of a family feel part of a unified system with a sense of cohesion, work towards common goals in a cooperative manner, and develop as healthy individuals’’ (Galbraith, 2000:15; Upko, 2009).

Leadership is no longer simply described as an individual characteristic or difference, but rather is depicted in various models as dyadic, shared, relational, strategic, global, and a complex social dynamic (Avolio, 2007, Yukl, 2006). To study family leadership, a theoretical framework is proposed by the researchers for several reasons. First, although a family has distinct characteristics that set it apart from a business or organization, it is a very important unit having very large effects on human life, and minimal work has been done in applying concepts and propositions from the field of organizational behavior to the family field. Second, a family leadership framework is appropriate because it has the potential to fill a need that, to a large extent, has been overlooked-a well-functioning executive. Finally, it is hypothesized that through the use of leadership practices that correspond to transformational leadership and the adoption of a leadership paradigm or philosophical orientation, couples and families can develop and maintain characteristics and processes associated with healthy marriages and families (Galbraith, 2000:5-6).

Parents as leaders, those charged with the responsibility of guiding children through life, should be one of life's givens, not a novel concept. After all, parenting has a long established history of followers, children, whose parents have served as leaders either intentionally or unintentionally through the ages (Walker, 2009). It is important to recognize that parents as leaders are faced with the primary task of leading their family team. In addition this, from our families we learn skills that enable us to function in larger and more formal settings, such as school and the workplace. Family experiences also shape our expectations of how the larger world will interact with us (Kern and Peluso, 1999).

The concept of family leadership orientation is stated by Baloglu and Bulut (2015:191) as an influencing and directing power of parents on children or family members to social, economic, politic and cultural goals. A typical demonstration of social family leadership orientation is to train and direct the members to family values. Economic family leadership orientation in the family occur when a family leader effects the children’ financial decision, their productivity, saving and spending behavior and promotion of their quality of life.  As to cultural leadership, it emerges with custom or any cultural practice such as celebrations, ceremonies and cultural activities in the family tradition.

Social entrepreneurship means different things for different persons. Many management writers have presented a lot of theories for entrepreneurship (Dees, 1998). Many definitions were made to highlight the different aspects of social entrepreneurship. For example, Schumpeter (1934) used words of “the carrying out of new combinations” and Drucker (2014) saw it as exploiting the opportunities in order to create change in technology, consumers’ preferences, social norms, etc. Some authors have explained the non-profit properties of these activities as a different feature of social entrepreneurship, too (Mair and Marti, 2006; Mair et al., 2006; Mair and Noboa, 2006; Austin et al., 2006).

Dees (1998) argues that the first aim of social enterprises, just like businesses, must be to create a high social value. The best indicator of this in the competitive market structure is to use resources more effectively rather than racing. Social entrepreneurs should investigate innovative ways.  According to Dyer and Handler (1994), the transfer of leadership to the next generation has become an important subject for some researchers. There are different perspectives about family and entrepreneurial dynamics.

Generativitiy is a concept with different definitions containing interests, requirements and tasks. This concept is particularly associated with 7 features. These include cultural demands, inner desire, generated interest, belief, commitment, and personal narration to produce action. Erikson's theory of psychosocial development (1963) explains the eighth grades in human life. Generativity with Erikson’ perspective is a building and consisting of the future of individuals, and the basic task of the parents is to educate their children according to these stages.

People can learn to be productive in life from different sources and the primary source is educational institutions. In addition, beliefs, political views and culture have an important impact on generativity behavior. Like these factors, professional lives of individuals affect their generativity behavior as well. According to McAdams and Aubin (1992), our neighbors, friends and our leisure activities also have important effects on our generativity behavior.

McAdams (2003) asserts that people have to create skills in their individual life stories. Generativity is the meaning of life and this reality can be said to be the most important role in their life.  People transform many negative events into positive events with the positive generativity. Hart (2001) claims there are strong relations between generativity and behavior of adults in terms of psychological and social concepts and these concepts affect the relationship of people with their families, neighbors, friends and the community. 

Due to the socio-personal resource, generativity is an important mission to ensure social continuity. It can be said that it is also important in sustaining the quality of the community development. Generativity is the main psychological factor in the change of the society and it also shapes the emotions and thoughts of people (Keyes and Ryff, 1998: 233-234).

The   relationship   between   generativity   and    social indicators is examined by many researchers (Peterson and Stewart, 1993; Peterson and Klohn, 1995; Peterson et al., 1997; Pratt et al., 1999; 2006; Huta and Zuroff, 2007; Hofer et al., 2008; Hamby et al., 2015; Carmeli et al., 2016) A study conducted by Nakagawa (1991) in the state and private schools showed that the more productive families are, the more information they need to get about their children’s school life and they also tend to be more helpful in their children's homework.

Academic achievements of the students are assessed in different ways, as competence and proficiency. Tests are among these ways. In the education literature, academic achievement is usually to meet short and long-term educational goals (Harackiewicz et al., 2000).

Primary school researchers generally use classroom observation techniques in the collection of data to determine the academic success (Biggs and Collis, 2014).  However, many researchers utilized standardized cognitive- ability tests in secondary and high schools so as to determine the academic success. “There are many academic studies on the academic achievements of students in higher education institutions and there are also many variables and estimators that determine the academic success in these institutions (Dennis et al., 2005:223-235)”.

The interest, participation and involvement of parents in their children's education have always had a positive effect on their school performance (Topor et al., 2010). However, there is no any study on how the family leadership affects social entrepreneurship, generativity and academic success concerning college students. Forming a theoretical structural equation model including “entrepreneurship” “generativity” and “academic achievement” not only sheds light on the distinctive nature of the family leadership but it also indicates direct and indirect relations among these concepts. The current study addresses this issue.

The study was designed in a causal relationship and a theoretical model to explain the cause and effect relationship among the Family Leadership Orientation and its sub-dimensions with Social Entrepreneurship, Generativity and Academic Success.

Participants

This study was conducted on a university in central Anatolia in Turkey. To explain the relations among the variables 3 colleges randomly selected. The study group, consisted of 3^rd and 4^th grade students was defined by cluster sampling method. A total of 402 voluntary students, who were in the process of graduation from university, took part in the study. The mean age of the participants was 22.45 years old and the standard deviation for the age was 1.76. The age range was 19 to 38. The mean family income of the participants was 2456.79 TL (Turkish Lira) and the standard deviation of the income was 1303.23 TL. The income range was 250 to 10000 TL. Further information about the study group is presented in Table 1. 

As shown in Table 1, “76.57% of the participants were women” and “73.13% of the participants were the 4^th year students. 66.91% of them were students at the Faculty of Education and this was followed by Faculty of Arts and Sciences (20.90%) and Health College (12.19%).

Data collecting tools

In this study, three scales and a demographic information form were used to collect the data. Family Leadership Orientation Scale was developed by author and his colleague. Permission for the applications of Social Entrepreneurship Scale and Generativity Scales were taken from authors via e-mail. Detailed information about the tools is given as follows.

Family Leadership Orientation Scale (FLOS)

FLOS was developed by BaloÄŸlu and Bulut (2016). This scale, a five point Likert type and ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), consists of 28 items and four factors. Factors were named as economic (8 items), social (5 items), political (6 items) and cultural (9 items). The cultural factor consists of three sub-factors called ‘directing to activities’ (3 items), ‘influence on lifestyle’ (3 items) and ‘sustentation of tradition’ (3 items). In a survey conducted by Baloglu and Bulut (2016), the internal consistency coefficient, Cronbach’s Alpha, was found as 0.89. For factors, the coefficient was: economic = 0.91, social = 0.88, political = 0.89 and cultural; directing to activities = 0.83, influence on lifestyle = 0.79 and sustentation of tradition = 0.77. For this study group, while the internal consistency coefficient Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.84, the coefficient of the factors was: Economic = 0.91, social = 0.84, political = 0.86 and cultural; 0.73. Split-half coefficient is 0.91.

Social Entrepreneurship Scale

This scale consists of  35  items  and  6  subscales.  The  subscales were named as follows: Having social mission, creating social value, being innovative, seeing social enterprise opportunities, creating resources and ensuring sustainability, benefiting from social network. Scale was adopted in Turkish culture by Kirilmaz (2012) based on the study of Onyx and Bullen (2000), the study of Schuyt et al. (2010), the study of Bateman and Crant (1993), from the study of Schwer and Yucelt (1984). The internal consistency coefficient Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.89. A five-point Likert type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) was used in this study while the internal consistency coefficient Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.86. Split-half coefficient was 0.84.

Generativity scale

McAdams (2001) has extended Erikson’s theorizing and developed a series of measures of individual variability in generativity in adulthood, as well as a broad model of how generativity operates in the personality (McAdams and de St. Aubin, 1992). A core element of McAdams’ model focuses on the construct of generative concern, as measured by the Loyola Generativity Scale, a 20-item questionnaire designed to index variations in commitment to generative roles and activities (Pratt et al., 2006). Adaptation study of this scale in Turkish culture was made by Karacan (2007). The internal consistency coefficient Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.76. A five-point Likert type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) was used in this study while the internal consistency coefficient Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.78. Split-half coefficient was 0.80.

Academic success

To determine the academic success of the participants, Grade Point Average (GPA) was used. It is a 4.00 scale used to define the students’ success. The level of academic success was assumed as: 2.00-2.5, 49 fairly well; 2.5-2.99 medium and 3.00-4.00 is good.

Data collection and analyses

Data were collected from September 2016 through October 2016. The questionnaire was applied during the breaks of the students taking into account their willingness. Before the application, the purpose of the study was explained by the researcher and it was instructed that the participants could skip any questions that they do not want to answer.

Quantitative analysis techniques were used to analyze the data. The parametric properties of the data were taken into account. A Structural Equation Model (SEM) formed by researcher consisted of “The family leadership perception, which constitutes three dimensions  namely  social,  cultural   and   economic,   affects   the students’ social entrepreneurship and this consequently influences their generativity and their academic achievement as well”. This theory was verified via the Structured Equation Model Test.

The mean and standard deviation results of the sub-dimensions of the family leadership social entre-preneurship, generativity and academic success are given in Table 2.

The mean and standard deviation rates of the variables are shown in Table 2, which shows that the economic family leadership orientation of the students has the highest mean score with 4.52. This is followed by social family leadership orientation (4.12) and cultural family leadership orientation (3.72). The lowest mean score is the political leadership orientation with 2.35. The mean of the social entrepreneurship is 3.71 and the mean of generativity is 3.61. Academic success was found as 3.03 at the good level.

The results of regression analyses to indicate estimate rate of family leadership on social entrepreneurship are given in Table 3.

As shown in Table 3, the results of regression analyses show that the economic family leadership orientation explains 30%; social family leadership orientation explains 0.14% and cultural family leadership orientation explains 0.17% of the social entrepreneurship. In this statistical result, the explained variance was “R²= 0.27” and adjusted “R²= 0.26”.

The results of regression analyses for generativity are given in Table 4. As shown in the table, the economic family leadership orientation of the students explains 0.14% and cultural family leadership orientation 0.16% of the generativity. In this statistical result, the explained variance was found as (R²=) 0.12 and adjusted (R²=) 0.11. The results of regression analyses for academic success are given in Table 5. As shown in the table, economic family leadership orientation of the students explains 0.18% of the academic success. The explained variance was found as (R²=) 0.05 and adjusted (R²=) 0.04.

This research finding indicates that the economic family leadership orientation of the college students has the highest mean score with 4.52. This is followed by social family leadership orientation (4.12) and cultural family leadership orientation (3.72).  The lowest mean score is in political family leadership orientation with 2.35. This means that the students are under the influence of the most economic leadership, at least the political leadership, in their families. These results concerning the family leadership orientation of the participants are quite consistent with the findings of the research conducted by Baloglu and Bulut (2015, 2016). The high scores of the economic family leadership orientation show that the economic structure in the family is very important and the economic leadership in the family has a great influence on the children. This may be due to the fact that financial aspect is a fundamentally defining factor of family life in Turkish culture. On the other hand, the political leadership orientation has the lowest mean with 2.35, which may show that families are trying to keep their children away from the political fluctuations, which may also include military coups, riots, and protests and so on. 

In this study, the participants evaluated themselves in terms of social entrepreneurship ( =3.71 over 5), generativity ( =3.61 over 5) and academic success ( =3.03 over 4) at good levels. The high scores in social entrepreneurship and generativity mean that the participants see themselves active. According to Schlenker (1980), people in general want to make good impressions on others during self-presentation. These results may be an indication of this opinion.

There are positive relations between family leadership (namely, economic, social and cultural) and social entrepreneurship. This relationship between leadership and social entrepreneurship was discussed by many researchers. For example, Eyal and Kark (2004) found that there was strong relationship between different leadership styles and alternative entrepreneurial strategies. Juliet and George (2005) considered that the charismatic leadership is very important in social entrepreneurship. Jensen and Luthans (2006) investigated the relationship between entrepreneurs and their authentic leadership. Bhutiani et al. (2012) explored the similarities between social entrepreneurship and transformational leadership and they found that transformational leadership provides an important managerial basement for entrepreneurship.

According to regression analysis results, economic, social and cultural family leadership orientation of the students explain social entrepreneurship significantly; economic and cultural family leadership orientation explain generativity significantly and finally economic family leadership explains academic success significantly. The outstanding result here is that economic family leadership estimates all of the variables of this study (social entrepreneurship, generativity and academic success). This may mean that economic family leadership plays an important role in Turkish family life.

They are likely to expect their children to be economically independent and this can be seen in all of the results. The results of correlation analysis show that while the economic, social and cultural family leadership orientation is in a positive relation with social entrepreneurship and generativity; political family leadership orientation has a negative correlation with social entrepreneurship and GPA. This means that, except for political family leadership orientation, the other dimensions of family leadership orientation have positive impacts on participants. The economic, social and cultural family leadership orientations foster social entrepreneurship and generativity whereas political family leadership hinders social entrepreneurship and academic success. As mentioned above, political aspects could be seen as dangerous, negative and risky activities in Turkish society and culture (Güler, 2004). Consistent with the results of this study, Kümbül (2008) found a positive correlation between social entrepreneurship and academic success as well.

There are significant differences between economic family leadership orientation, social family leadership orientation and academic success in terms of gender. The mean scores of women in economic family leadership orientation, social family leadership orientation and academic success are higher than men’s. According to these results, it can be concluded that family leadership affects women more than men in Turkish culture. Likewise, women are seen to be more successful than men with regard to academic success. According to Duckworth and Seligman (2006), the reason why women are more successful than men is that women have a stronger sense of responsibility when compared to men.

The main claim of the research was that the family leadership orientation of the college students affects their social entrepreneurship, which consequently affects their generativity and academic success. This theory was tested and verified by structured equation model. The statistical results verify the proposed model of this study. The fit indices are CMIN/df = 1.60; NFI: 990; RFI: 950; IFI: 996; TLI: 981; CFI: 996 and RMSEA: 0.04. All the fit indices are within the acceptable limits (Byrne, 2001; Tabachnick and Fidell, 2001; McDonald and Moon-Ho, 2002; Schermelleh-Engel, Moosbrugger and Müller, 2003; Brown, 2006). This verification means that the family leadership orientation is an important concept to define social entrepreneurship, generativity and academic success in the life of individuals.

As a conclusion, the college students took part in this study are effected the most by economic leadership in their family.  They see themselves at a good level in terms of social entrepreneurship and generativity. The sub-dimensions of the family leadership orientation estimate the participants’ social entrepreneurship, generativity and academic success at a significant level from 0.14 to 0.30. From this perspective, it could be said that the family leadership orientation is an important factor  in  the  lives  of  the  students.  Finally,  it   can   be suggested that the family leadership concept should be tested with the same variables in other western and eastern countries.

In addition, a family is a social unit characterized by social, cultural and economic features. From this point of view, family leadership can be seen as a new and fundamental leadership area in which all leadership theory’ can be applied or on which empirical research can be conducted. The main contributions of this study to the field of leadership can be seen this way.

The authors have not declared any conflict of interests.

The author gratefully acknowledge the invaluable scientific contributions of the Research Assistant Meryem Berrin Bulut to the content of this research.