There is much debate regarding whether family firms have a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Some believe that their greatest competency may be their familiness; or the resources that accrue at the intersection of the family and business systems. Building on this belief, we argue that firms that brand themselves as family businesses may experience superior performance since consumers often see family firms as trustworthy, quality-driven and customer-focused. Thus, a family firm image may be a way for family firms to exploit their familiness in the marketplace. The results from our study support this view and also identify factors that increase the likelihood that a family business will choose to create a family firm image. Family firms that express much pride in their family connection and heritage, have strong ties with other businesses in their communities, and stress a long-term orientation in strategic planning were most likely to possess a strong family firm image. These results were found through a survey-based study of 179 CEOs of privately-held family businesses in Switzerland.
Our findings have important implications for practice because they demonstrate how family firms may be able to accrue a performance advantage in the marketplace. While some family firms choose to downplay their family ties, perhaps due to (mis)perceptions regarding their conservatism and resistance to change, those firms that decide to foster a family firm image by branding themselves as family firms and highlighting their family involvement seem to be most successful. Therefore, in these tough economic times when it is most necessary for firms to stand-out from the crowd to garner and maintain business, our results suggest that building a family firm image may help family businesses to successfully compete. A family firm image may facilitate firm performance and may also help family firms to weather economic downturns.
The present paper empirically investigates the impact of family relationship conflict on subjective firm valuation by family firm owner managers. Drawing on the emerging socioemotional wealth perspective of corporate ownership, we find a U-shaped relationship between relationship conflict inside the family firm and subjective family firm valuation. This finding suggests that negatively valenced emotions induced by the conflict, at low levels of conflict, lead to emotion congruent withdrawal behavior and hence lower valuation. With conflicts gaining in fervor and severity, owner-managers start endowing and pricing sunk costs related to the conflict. This finding suggests that emotions do indeed have spill-over effects on monetary value perceptions and that negatively valenced emotions induced by relationship conflict are not linearly appraised. Rather, to understand the impact of negative emotions on corporate ownership appraisal and attachment it is required to reconcile the emotion congruency with the prospect theory perspective.
Through the lens of stakeholder theory this text deepens our understanding of financial and nonfinancial performance outcomes in family firms across multiple stakeholder categories, including the family level of analysis. Based on this foundation, we develop a typology of performance relationships between performance outcomes: overlapping, causal, synergistic, and substitutional. We argue that these relationships, when used between constructive (positive) performance outcomes, are able to increase stakeholder satisfaction, which in turn increases organizational effectiveness. Through this analysis, we extend the common one-dimensional and cause-effect understanding of performance in family firms and move towards a comprehensive stakeholder performance perspective, which provides insights for increasing organizational effectiveness of family firms.
Dieses Buch verbindet auf innovative Weise bewährte Konzepte des strategischen Managements mit den besonderen Herausforderungen der Führung von Familienunternehmen. Das strategische Management des Unternehmens wird ergänzt um das strategische Management des Familien- und Eigentümerkreises. Im Mittelpunkt steht das Ziel, langfristig Wert für alle Bezugsgruppen des Familienunternehmens zu schaffen. Die Auswahl der Wertsteigerungsstrategien berücksichtigt deshalb
- sowohl die finanziellen als auch die nichtfinanziellen Ziele der Unternehmerfamilie;
- sowohl die Interessen der Familienaktionäre als auch der Kunden, Mitarbeitenden und der Öffentlichkeit;
- sowohl die besonderen Ressourcen als auch die Restriktionen, die sich durch das Engagement der Unternehmerfamilie für das Unternehmen ergeben;
- sowohl die dem Unternehmen offenstehenden Nutzenpotentiale als auch Möglichkeiten zu ihrer Ausschöpfung.
Potentialorientierte Familyness setzt bei den Stärken von Familienunternehmen an. Im Zentrum steht die Schaffung von Synergien zwischen Familie und Unternehmen. Das Buch zeigt auf, wie Familienunternehmen innovative oder bisher vernachlässigte Nutzenpotentiale aufspüren und neue Wertsteigerungsmöglichkeiten realisieren können. Grundlage dafür bildet eine systematische Analyse der Familyness, das heisst der besonderen Ressourcen, die sich aus der Konstellation des Familienunternehmens ergeben können. Die Autoren illustrieren ihr Konzept mit zahlreichen Fallstudien und können sich dabei auf eigene Forschungsergebnisse sowie Praxiserfahrungen im Umgang mit Familienunternehmen stützen.
Recent studies provide empirical evidence that family firms are outperforming their non-family counterparts in terms of stock market performance. For the Swiss stock market we find that family firms indeed outperform their non-family counterparts after controlling for firm size and beta. In addition, our data shows that family firms display more stable earnings per share in contrast to their non-family counterparts. Furthermore we find that the variance of earnings per share positively affects analyst forecast dispersion. According to anomaly literature, lower analyst forecast dispersion has been found to induce higher excess return, which our data supports for the Swiss stock market. By linking variance of earnings per share, analyst forecast dispersion and stock performance we provide an insightful explanation for the excess stock market returns of family firms. In addition, our text extends the theory of dispersion effect with an additional empirical element, the variance of earnings per share.
