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The role of organizational resilience enabling firms to respond to adversity and survive has become ever more critical in the wake of an increasingly unpredictable external environment. Yet, while we understand the importance of resilience in responding to a major adversity, we have little appreciation for how firms are affected and react when facing multiple adversities over time, or how multilevel factors might impose on this process. These are crucial issues given that adversities are not necessarily single, isolated, or infrequent episodes. By studying a long-established family firm in the United Kingdom that experienced four major adversities, we identify the process that enabled it not only to survive but also to thrive. In this qualitative study, we introduce the notion of organizational fortitude to describe the approach that a firm develops to cope with the challenges of multiple unexpected adversities and highlight how multilevel factors combine to foster organizational fortitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the effect of family involvement in ownership, management and directorship on audit fees during the crisis and non-crisis periods. Design/methodology/approach: Following Anderson and Reeb (2003), this paper uses a two-way fixed effect model to examine the impact of family control on audit fees in crisis and non-crisis periods. The fixed effects include dummy variables for each year and each industry code in the sample. Findings: This paper finds that during normal economic periods, family firms pay lower audit fees relative to non-family firms because of the incentive alignment or monitoring effect. While, during crisis periods, family firms pay higher audit fees because of the shareholder expropriation effect. Research limitations/implications: The results reported in this paper have both practical and policy implications for the demand and supply of audit services to firms having different ownership structures. Originality/value: This is the first study of its kind to examine the effect of family ownership and involvement on audit fees during the crisis period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This practitioner paper aims to question basic assumptions about management education and to argue that a new paradigm is needed for UK business schools which embraces an oft neglected, yet economically vital, stakeholder group, namely family businesses. It seeks to pose the question of why we have forgotten to teach about family business management in the management portfolio. Design/methodology/approach - The paper adopts a stakeholder approach, building on nominal stakeholder theory to justify a change to the teaching paradigm in business schools. It builds on discussions in the extant literature about failures of business schools to address modern needs. Findings - The authors find that business schools in the UK need to begin to engage with family businesses through embracing the next generation from families in business. Policy needs to be developed that will support the next generation in a positive way by teaching about the family in business. Originality/value - The paper aims to stimulate discussion about key stakeholders and prompt review of neglect of this key area of business study in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the relationship between ownership concentration and firm value. Our findings, based on a dynamic panel data analysis, show that there is a quadratic relationship between the company's value and its ownership concentration. Additionally, our evidence suggests that for countries where investor protection is low, the relationship follows an inverted ‘UÂ’ shape, while for countries where investor protection is high, the relationship is positive and nearly linear. Moreover, the influence of blockholders depends on their identity. This paper highlights the superior performance of family firms in controlling agency problems, a situation which contrasts vis-à-vis institutional shareholders. Finally, we report that the family effect is nonlinear. Indeed the positive effect starts to taper off at around 30% of ownership being somewhat smaller and less statistically significant between 30% and 50% of ownership. Moreover, in contrast to recent studies, the family effect is more pronounced in majority-controlled firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the effects of separation of ownership and control because of vote differentiation on listed family firms’ investment performance. The authors study the question of whether family-controlled firms have better investment performance than nonfamily firms and whether this investment performance is negatively affected by a separation of ownership and control because of vote differentiation. Marginal q is used as a performance measure. The empirical analysis shows that family control has a positive impact on investment performance when ownership and control are aligned, whereas separation of ownership and control in terms of vote-differentiated shares reduce investment performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The primary research question examined in this paper is whether ethnic and non-ethnic family firms in the United Kingdom differ in their strategy-making. The paper uses the typology of strategic decision-making produced by Whittington [(). What is strategy: and does it matter? New York: Routledge] to derive contrasting predictions of strategy-making by ethnic versus non-ethnic firms. Drawing on a questionnaire study of 76 high-growth family firms, and subsequent in-depth fieldwork with 40 of these, the findings show that the ethnic origin of the controlling family has a significant influence in determining the dominance of a particular strategy paradigm. However, successful high-growth family firms are not associated with any particular school of strategy. The influence of family bonding on strategy-making was greater in ethnic family firms than non-ethnic family firms. The advent of the second generation of South Asians in family firms, and closer integration of immigrant and host communities, has not altered these apparent differences. The findings challenge researchers on family firms to adopt a multiple perspective approach to strategy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family firms that can leverage entrepreneurial experience and knowledge can shape local economic development. Practitioners concerned with fostering enterprise sustainability need to be aware that family firms cite contrasting goals, resource profiles and requirements. Family firms are not a homogeneous entity. The 'targeting' of support to 'types' of family firms could enable practitioners to satisfy their wealth creation and social inclusion objectives. To stimulate increased critical reflection, insights from agency and stewardship theories were drawn upon to illustrate six conceptualized 'types' of private firms based on company ownership and management structures as well as company objectives. Cross-sectional survey evidence was gathered from key informants in family firms in the UK. An agglomerative hierarchical QUICK CLUSTER analysis identified seven empirical 'types' of family firms. Four out of the six conceptualized 'types' were validated by the exploratory empirical taxonomy. Implications for policy-makers and practitioners as well as researchers are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A matched sample methodology was utilized to detect ownership and management differences between first generation and multi-generation independent unquoted family companies in the UK. Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in first generation and multi-generation companies were generally drawn from the family owning the company. Both types of companies also had small management teams. Several statistically significant differences were detected. CEOs served longer apprenticeships in multi-generation rather than first generation companies. Multi-generation rather than first generation companies were more likely to employ managers drawn from the family owning the company. In other respects, multi-generation companies generally appeared to be better managed than first generation companies. Multi-generation companies had larger boards of directors. Moreover, a larger proportion of multi-generation rather than first generation companies employed a non-executive director. Owners of both types of family companies, but particularly the owners of first generation companies may be 'control averse'. Many first generation companies (and some multi-generation companies) associated with a shallower managerial pool had failed to address this potential managerial and strategic weakness by selective use of 'outside' managerial expertise. Implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study draws on agency theory and the resource-based view to hypothesize that family and nonfamily businesses differ in the capital that they deploy and the way that they deploy it. It, and test this hypothesis in a large U.K.-based sample of 319 family business and 258 nonfamily business owner/managers. The analysis revealed that adverse selection, opportunism, and niche marginalization are more prevalent among family business owner/managers. Yet, their businesses are similar to those of their nonfamily business peers in performance outcomes such as size and growth, which suggests that weaknesses in human and financial capital choice are offset by strengths in the social capital of family firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]