Business Commons^™

We examine the unique nature of conflict between controlling family owners and minority shareholders (principal-principal conflict) in publicly traded family controlled firms through examining shareholder proposals. Implicit in prior governance and family business research has been that non-family shareholders are likely to be in conflict with the dominant family owners. In general, we find that much of this fear may be unwarranted except under specific circumstances. Our findings elucidate sources of heterogeneity in family firm principal-principal conflict and add greater nuance to our understanding of this type of agency problem within family firms.