Disentangling the role of family-related factors on financial firm performance

Abstract

A growing body of literature is dedicated to the question whether family firms perform better than non-family firms. Despite the growing amount of research, theoretical and empirical analyses of family firms have produced conflicting findings, leaving the question why the ‘family effect’ can be positive as well as negative still unanswered. This dissertation researches unique characteristics of family firms and their influence on financial firm performance. As such, this dissertation consists of three main themes, i.e., intangible resources, the board of directors and the risk-taking behavior of family firms. The chapters on intangible resources investigate the effect of family organizational culture, family firm reputation, human capital and networks and combinations of these resources on the financial performance of family firms. Our research on the board of directors studies the influence of the gap between board task expectations or needs and board task performance on the relation between board demographic variables and family firm performance. Lastly, we investigate the risk-taking behavior of family firms compared to non-family firms and study the influence of the non-family CEO conditional on his or her CEO tenure on the level of risk taking.