Championing Family Business Issues to Influence Public Policy: Evidence From Australia

Abstract

Abstract: This paper proposes a strategy for the family firm sector to gain the attention of policy makers. The strategy builds through influencing social expectations, creating political issues, developing legislative actions which are subsequently implemented and regulated. To achieve this, we suggest that the family business sector must achieve salience as a community’s definitive stakeholders in which capacity they possess, or are perceived to possess, attributes of power, legitimacy and urgency . Propositions are advanced consistent with developing these attributes that collectively build a policy pathway from the societal benefits that family firms can provide by suggesting the building and management of family firm resources to generate optimal outcomes. Experiences from Australia to illustrate the introduced processes are included. Key words: Family business; life cycle; issue management; stakeholder salience; public policy; Australian case study It is impossible to ignore family business. This business rubric permeates, and contributes stoically to, the economic and social well-being of every society. In the USA, family businesses are estimated to account for up to 49% of GDP and 78% of new job creation (Astrachan & Shanker, 2003) with these figures being reflective of most developed countries around the world. Considerable evidence suggests that family businesses generally out perform their non-family counterparts using a variety of metrics (e.g., Dibrell & Craig, 2006; McConaughy, Matthews, & Fialko, 2001). Anderson and Reeb (2003) confirm that when family members serve as the CEO, financial performance is better than with CEOs from outside the family, and that this effect is even more pronounced when founders are still active; supporting that family ownership is an effective organizational form. However, despite the fact that it is estimated that family business makes up approximately 80% of all business globally, it is only recently that scholars have paid more than a cursory glance to family business as a research pursuit. Though this ignorance is being addressed and family business research is gaining significant traction in academic journals and, with that, overdue legitimacy, in the absence of an accepted framework, interpreting research results to influence public policy, with few notable exceptions,