Business Commons^™

Bound By Laws, Or By Values? A Multi-Level And Cross-National Approach To Understanding The Protection Of Minority Owners In Family Firms, Charles Stevens, Roland Kidwell, Robert Sprague

Robert Sprague

How do firm-level attributes and country-level institutions affect cross-national and firm-level differences in how minority owner rights in family firms are protected?

We consider differences in family dynamics, stewardship-oriented organizational culture, and countries’ legal and cultural dimensions to develop theory predicting differences in minority owner protection in family firms. We advance propositions and a model delineating the role of these key firm-level and country-level constructs.

We contribute to the literature in three ways: 1) We illustrate the importance of family dynamics for predicting the likelihood of a stewardship-oriented culture to emerge in a family firm; 2) Our multi-level and cross-national …

Agency Differences In Professional Family Businesses: The Known And The Unknown, Ken Moores, Justin Craig

Justin B. Craig

We suggest in this paper one of the reasons that researchers concur agency costs in family firms are more complex than originally thought maybe related to the lack of conceptual clarity. This, we propose, is because when frameworks and theories are borrowed and enthusiastically embraced without attention to clearly defining concepts from original sources, conceptual clarity is clouded. Clarity is achieved by specifying the conditions necessary for these concepts to be applicable in generating originally envisaged consequences. We present the conditions necessary for the optimum applicability of original agency theoretical concepts in family firms and tentatively distinguish between what is …