Abstract
Considered as the most dominant business form in the entrepreneurial fabric in Morocco, as in the majority of countries in the world (Salhi, 2017), the family business is distinguished by a family social capital (FSC) making it competitive and perennial (Mesfar & Ben Kahla, 2018). This paper aims to analyze the influence of this capital, through its three dimensions — structural, relational, and cognitive — on the governance system of Moroccan family firms. The results of our exploratory study conducted among 30 family businesses in the form of interviews showed, on the one hand, that the existence of a strong FSC within the company makes its governance system based on informal family mechanisms. On the other hand, the weakness of the said capital has not led the companies that are the subject of our study to adopt formal corporate governance mechanisms as shared by several researchers. This is due, according to the interviewees, to socio-cultural considerations. Our results contribute to the enrichment of the literature while showing that the informality of governance mechanisms can be explained, not only by the strength of its FSC but also by such a socio-cultural context where the family model is of a communal and clan type welded by Islamic religious values of group cohesion
Highlights
Through the involvement of the family in the ownership structure of family businesses, the latter benefit from a set of resources (Bolton & Park, 2020) likely to provide a competitive advantage; Family ties create and make available to family firms a specific social capital that makes them sustainable and competitive.Despite its importance, this capital remains a fertile field for research that has been little explored
In order to analyze the influence of family social capital (FSC) on the corporate governance system of family firms in our sample, it is very interesting, first, to determine the intensity of the FSC in each firm
We have shown, through this research, that family businesses are distinguished from their non-family counterparts by a specific social capital
Summary
Through the involvement of the family in the ownership structure of family businesses, the latter benefit from a set of resources (Bolton & Park, 2020) likely to provide a competitive advantage; Family ties create and make available to family firms a specific social capital that makes them sustainable and competitive. Despite its importance, this capital remains a fertile field for research that has been little explored. In contrast to studies conducted in contexts where the restricted conception of the family — husband, wife, brothers, and sisters (Lwango, 2009)
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