Family governance and family firm outcomes

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Esra Memili, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: We are pleased to present this Special Issue on Family Governance in the Journal of Family Business Management. The focus of the six articles in this Special Issue is on family governance, idiosyncratic family firm behavior, strategies, and performance. This Guest Editor’s note synthesizes the contributing authors’ propositions and findings concerning family governance and provides future research directions.

Many firms around the world exhibit family governance via family ownership, family’s involvement in management and/or board, and other forms which can in turn substantially influence their strategies, behavior, and performance. When family business members pursue particularistic goals and strategies, these reflect on to firm strategies, behavior, and performance. For instance, the particularistic pursuit of family-centered non-economic goals create intentions to preserve socioemotional wealth (SEW), including family control and influence, binding social ties, emotional attachment, family members’ identification with the firm, and renewal of family bonds to the firm through dynastic succession (Berrone et al., 2012; Carney, 2005). The achievement of non-economic goals is contingent upon the family’s control of the firm through family governance mechanisms (Chrisman et al., 2014). Hence, when SEW is coupled with family governance components such as family ownership, they are influential on firm strategies, behavior, and performance. Accordingly, some of the articles in the Special Issue suggest and show that the family governance driven by SEW preservation concerns shape strategic behaviors such as innovation and different types of innovators (i.e. limited, intended, potential, and active) (Li and Daspit, 2016) and unique family controlled Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITS) driven by SEW perform differently depending on CEO founder vs successor in charge (Chang and Noguera, 2016).

Additional Information

Publication
Journal of Family Business Management, 6(2)
Language: English
Date: 2016
Keywords
family governance, family firms

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