Family CEO Research Articles

Product Market Competition, Executive Compensation, and CEO Family Ties

This paper analyzes the interaction between product market competition and family ties on the structure of CEO pay, in a panel of publicly listed family firms. To account for the multi-dimensional nature of competition we use a variety of measures. We find that in industries where import penetration is high, products are differentiated or domestic concentration is high, family CEOs’ variable pay is lower than is professional CEOs’ variable pay; but the former is more closely related to firm performance. This result remains strong when we account for the equity component of compensation and for endogeneity concerns and when we test the hypothesis of family CEOs’ “pay for luck”. Our findings suggest that: (1) competition is likely to substitute incentive pay in homogeneous product markets and to complement them in differentiated industries and in markets that are open to international trade; and (2) product market characteristics are more important than are family ties in shaping managerial compensation.

Ambidexterity in family firms: The interplay between family influences within and beyond the executive suite

Ambidexterity commonly refers to the simultaneous pursuit of exploration and exploitation and may be particularly beneficial for family firms. In this study, we investigate how family CEO and top management team (TMT) family affiliation influence ambidexterity. In addition, we consider the role of family ownership dispersion and how it impacts the ability of the top managers of family firms to foster ambidexterity. We test our hypotheses on a unique dataset combining archival and multiple respondent survey data of 167 German family firms. Our results shed light on conditions under which family-led leadership can pursue ambidexterity.

Enterprise risk management in small and medium family enterprises: the role of family involvement and CEO tenure

Taking the right amount of risk is essential for successful business. As a response to the importance of risk management, the effectiveness and implementation of enterprise risk management (ERM) systems are recently discussed in literature. However, smaller firm entrepreneurs often deal with this challenge in practice in a more informal way. Most of these small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) are family firms, where family dynamics further influence their risk behaviour. Addressing the missing implementation of ERM in Small and Medium Family Enterprises (SMFE), we first analyse how ERM influences the performance of SMFE. In a second step, we investigate the impact of CEO tenure and family involvement as moderators on the ERM – performance relationship. Regression analysis on a sample of 116 Austrian SMFE shows that ERM implementation does not directly influence financial performance. CEO tenure and family involvement, however, both show significant moderating effects on the ERM – performance relationship. Adding to current literature on the topic, this study reveals that ERM performance is positively moderated by CEO tenure and negatively by family involvement.

CEO age and risk-taking of family business in Malaysia: The inverse S-curve relationship

The relationship between CEO age and corporate risk-taking has remained inconclusive after decades of research. This study contends that CEO may have different risk-taking propensities at different age stages and the relationship could be better captured by nonlinear function. Using a large sample of 6169 firm-year observations of public listed companies in Malaysia, we study the risk-taking behaviour of CEO for the period of 2009 to 2017. We find that CEO age has an inverse U-shaped relationship, such that risk-taking increases with CEO age but reduces beyond certain age threshold. Besides, drawing on socioemotional wealth perspective, we further examine the moderating effect of family CEO. We find that near-retirement family CEO reverses the conservative behaviour at old age and results an inverse S-curved relationship. Findings of this paper yields implication for family business and policymakers seeking to encourage risk-taking behaviour in emerging countries.

Does family CEO enhance corporate performance? The case of Jordan

Does family CEO enhance corporate performance? The case of Jordan

The “Most Wanted”: The Role of Family Strategic Resources and Family Involvement in CEO Succession Intention

Stemming from familiness and the notion of nonimitable strategic resources, we investigate, in the presuccession phase, the role of acquisition and accumulation of family strategic resources, along with the way family involvement in the top management team affects resource mobilization and deployment, in determining the intention to choose either a family or a nonfamily member as the next CEO. Data from a cross-country double-respondent family business data set (Successful Transgenerational Entrepreneurship Practices project) reveal that human capital is a significant family strategic resource reducing the intention to select a family CEO, although leveraging this resource by a top management team dominated by family members enhances this intention.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Firms’ Financial Performance: A New Insight

A vast stream of literature has investigated the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firms’ financial performance (FFP). However, this effect has remained unclear and undecided. For instance, numerous studies have examined the direct impact of firms’ CSR initiatives on FFP, as well as examining various mechanisms to explain this relationship, but found inconsistent results. The indecisive results indicate that researchers lack consensus to define a mechanism to understand how and under what conditions CSR can affect FFP. Thus, this research aims to investigate how firms’ CSR perception and disclosure derive accounting- (return on equity: ROE, earnings per share: EPS), market- (Tobin Q) and perception-based firms’ financial performance through the mediation of competitive advantage and boundary conditions of family ownership and CEO narcissism. This research underpins the theoretical lens of the resource-based view to derive hypotheses. The research design employed in this study is quantitative, and the approach to theory development is deductive. Multi-method and multi-source data with temporal breaks are collected from 60 manufacturing firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSE). Primary data are collected from the top and middle managers, while secondary data are collected from the annual reports published by these firms. This research found that competitive advantage significantly mediated the indirect impact of perceived CSR and disclosure on FFP. Further, this relationship is strengthened by the contingencies of family ownership and CEO narcissism. Our results will assist the management of the firms to understand the implications of CSR perceptions and disclosure to derive a competitive advantage that ultimately translates into the firms’ financial performance. Further, this research also revealed that managers should concentrate on the boundary conditions of family ownership and CEO narcissism as well. In particular, this research contributes to understand why CSR is viewed to have a strategic importance for the firms and how a resource-based perspective might be utilized in such endeavors.

Ownership and performance in the Italian stock exchange: the puzzle of family firms

We present new evidence on the relationship between ownership, control and performance in family firms, by using a sample of Italian publicly listed companies from 2000 to 2017. We account for the potential self-selection bias of family firms with an endogenous treatment selection model. We do not find consistent evidence of a performance premium of Italian family firms or family CEOs as family firms achieve superior profitability, but lower market to book ratios. Interestingly, however, firm value is negatively impacted when the high controlling shares are disjointed from family ownership and when the family CEO is also Chair of the board. We also find that the equity stake is significantly lower when the CEO is a member of the controlling family, suggesting a trade-off between ownership and control within family firms.

A systematic literature review on family business: insights from an Asian context

PurposeFamily firms have been the subject of various scientific studies. This interest derives not only from their unique characteristics in terms of their management but more specifically in terms of their succession in a dimension that does not impact on other companies in the same way. Hence, and as a complex field of research, this study seeks to map out and analyse the intellectual knowledge on research into family firms in Asian contexts.Design/methodology/approachAs regards the statistical and analytical methods, the authors made recourse to the bibliometric, co-citation and cluster analysis techniques. In order to evaluate any potential patterns among the articles, the authors analysed the ways in which the articles are jointly cited. This furthermore applied hierarchical cluster analysis to the totality of the articles subject to co-citation analysis within the scope of grouping the interrelated articles into distinct sets. In order to graphically map the bibliographic co-citation analysis, the authors deployed the network and cluster determination theories.FindingsThe results enabled the identification and the classification of various theoretical perspectives on the domain of family firms into four main approaches: (1) family business behaviour; (2) family versus non-family CEOs; (3) business family performance; and (4) business family and people.Originality/valueThis study identifies, explores, analyses and summarises the main themes, contributing towards deepening the literature through the means of identifying the priority areas in relation to Asian family businesses able to guarantee international standards of excellence in comparison with their respective competitors.

Kuwaiti Families and Firm Performance in Non-Financial Listed Firms

Family variables positively affect firm performance from a theoretical and empirical perspective. However, this relationship has not been clearly examined in several countries, including Kuwait. This study explored family members’ role on boards of directors by investigating the relationship between family variables and firm performance using data from 93 non-financial firms listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) from 2016 to 2018. This study divided family variables into family ownership, family directors, family CEO, and ruling family. The results indicated that the presence of ruling family members on boards provided greater value for Kuwait’s listed firms; other variables produced mixed results.

Innovation in the post-succession phase of family firms: Family CEO successors and leadership constellations as resources

Innovation in the context of succession in family firms remains largely unexplored in empirical research. We investigate the post-succession innovation output of family and non-family CEO successors in family businesses using a sample of 455 German family firm successions. From a resource- and knowledge-based perspective, we examine how successor origin (i.e., family versus non-family CEO), continued predecessor influence, and context factors are related to post-succession innovation output. We find that a family CEO successor, higher successor CEO-related human capital, and prolonged predecessor influence increase the likelihood that post-succession innovation output is realized and, further, that the effect of predecessor CEO influence is moderated by successor CEO-related human capital. These results suggest that in many leadership constellations, distinctive familiness and access to the predecessors’ knowledge resources, as well as the transfer of resources and knowledge spillovers, provide a setting that enables innovation.

Can reputation concern restrain bad news hoarding in family firms?

Abstract Family involvement as chair of the board combines the reputation of the controlling family and the firm. Thus, the family's incentive to prevent reputation loss acts as a corporate governance mechanism in mitigating self-serving and bad news hoarding behavior of family firms. We find a lower future stock price crash risk in family firms with family related chairman, compared with family firms with non-family related chairman. The impact of family related chairman is more pronounced in firms with weaker external monitoring and more severe financial distress, and when families have greater reputation concern. Additionally, we find family-chair firms conduct more bad news forecasting, less tunneling behavior, higher earnings quality, as well as have lower costs of equity and overall better performance in the future. The family CEO has little impact on future stock price crash risk.

Family entrenchment and internal control: evidence from S&P 1500 firms

\We examine whether family owners exploit internal control weaknesses for entrenchment purposes and whether the public disclosure requirement under SOX 404 helps alleviate this entrenchment. We find supportive evidence for both questions. In the initial years of SOX 404 implementation (2004 and 2005), ineffective internal control in family CEO firms is more conducive to entrenchment – measured by the occurrence of misstatements, frauds, and related party transactions – than ineffective internal control in nonfamily firms is. With the public disclosure requirement of SOX 404 in place, family CEO firms are more likely to remediate internal control weaknesses, and the resulting improvement in internal control in family CEO firms has significantly reduced family entrenchment. Our findings provide new evidence on the dynamics of family entrenchment in the U.S. and shed light on a key benefit of public disclosure of internal control quality.

Board Education, Growth and Performance of Family CEO Listed Firms in Malaysia

This paper examines the relationship between board education, board size, growth, ownership and firm performance of family CEO and nonfamily CEO listed firms in Malaysia. A sample of 37 firms and data were collected over a period of five years from 2012 to 2016. The 37 samples of family firms were subdivided into family CEO (21), and non-family CEO (16) firms. The independent variables were board education as measured by the proportion of board degrees (BDEG) and the proportion of board professional qualifications (BPRO), board size (BSIZE), growth, and ownership. Meanwhile, firm performance was measured by using return on equity (ROE) and return on assets (ROA). The findings showed that there was a significant difference between family CEO and non-family CEO firms at a five percent level for board professional qualifications confirming that altruism and nepotism were observed among family members which supported the argument of characteristics of nepotism such as granting jobs to family members regardless of merit. In addition, this study also found board professional qualifications as significant but negatively related to external firm performance in family CEO firms. This showed that board education has not really been emphasized among board members. Besides, growth has significant influence on family firm performance which is evidently reflected in their contribution to the country’s GDP.

Stewardship-oriented Culture and Family Firm Performance: A Study on the Moderating Effects in an Emerging Economy

Abstract Prior literature has provided inconclusive evidence on the effects of family involvement in management (FIM) on family business (FB) performance. However, so far in the literature, there have been very few attempts to investigate FIM and family essence simultaneously as antecedents of FB performance. Therefore, we address this gap by studying how a stewardship-oriented culture (being a feature of FB essence) moderates the relationship between FIM and FB performance. We test our hypotheses with the Structural Equation Modeling technique using survey data in combination with archival data on a sample of 69 medium and large private Brazilian FBs. We find that a stewardship-oriented culture makes the relationship between a family CEO and FB performance weaker and observe that a stewardship has no moderating effect on the relationship between FIM and FB performance. These findings contradict prior literature on the beneficial role of stewardship in family-managed FB. Only in case of a nonfamily CEO, a stewardship-oriented culture positively moderates the relationship with FB performance. In addition, our study reveals a U-shaped nonlinear relationship between the level of FIM and FB performance, which is consistent with recent literature on the existence of faultlines derived from heterogeneous TMT and the impact on firm outcome.

When Do Family CEO Successors Perform Strategic Change Heterogeneously

When Do Family CEO Successors Perform Strategic Change Heterogeneously

Effects of family involvement on the monitoring of CEO compensation

This study examines the effectiveness of CEO compensation monitoring depending on the extent of family involvement in the firm. Considering the contradictory evidence on the effects of family involvement on CEO compensation reported by the literature to date, we adopt a procedural conception of CEO monitoring – that reflect processes and rules used in family firms for the alignment of CEO incentives structure to the firm interests –, to test four hypotheses derived from agency and socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspectives. Using a sample of 357 family and non-family Spanish companies, the results show that CEO compensation monitoring is inversely related to family status, and the relationship between CEO compensation monitoring and firm performance is stronger in firms where family influence is higher. In addition, we found that the presence of a family CEO negatively affects the implementation of economically instrumental monitoring mechanisms, decoupling CEO compensation from firm performance. Our research, aligned with recent socio-psychological literature on the study of processes of family firm’s management policies, thus contributes to a better understanding of the setting of CEO compensation in family firms as a result of a combination of common bonds and mutual expectations based on emotions and values with contractual and financial factors.

Firm value and pyramidal structures: New evidence for family firms

In this paper, we analyze what effects separating ownership and control have on the performance of a sample of 99 Chilean family-controlled firms for the period 2001–2014. Our results show an inverse U-shaped relationship between voting rights and cash flow rights divergence and firm value. This result suggests that excessive divergence of rights makes the firm’s value decline and can aggravate potential conflicts of interest inside family firms. We also find a positive moderating effect of business group affiliation, which highlights the ability of business groups to attenuate the negative impact of separating rights, particularly at high levels. We also find that family CEOs exert a beneficial effect on family firm performance at lower levels of divergence of rights, but that said effect disappears as the divergence of rights increases, suggesting that, when in control, family shareholders can ensure entrenchment by installing family member CEOs.

An Ongoing race: family CEOs vs. non-family CEOs

Recent studies have established that non-family CEOs invariably outperform family CEOs. In this paper, we argue that the case against family CEOs could be overstated. Applying a contingency theory, we propose that the growth stage of the firm and management practice domains moderate the influence of CEO type on firm performance. Using the dataset of 1288 family firms collected as part of the World Management Survey, we find support for most of the hypotheses. Finally, we draw attention to the conceptual and practical implications of our findings.

Family directors, independent directors, remuneration committee and executive remuneration in Malaysian listed family firms

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of family directors and independent directors on executive remuneration of listed family firms in Malaysia, and their involvement in remuneration committee on executive remuneration.Design/methodology/approachFixed effect estimation is employed to examine 1,395 firm-year observations from 2010 to 2014.FindingsFamily and independent directors do not have statistically significant influence on executive remuneration. Rather, family ownership exerts a significant positive influence on executive remuneration. This study also reveals that the interaction of family CEOs with the family directors on remuneration committee exerts a significant positive influence on executive remuneration.Research limitations/implicationsThe measurement of executive remuneration excludes the share options due to the non-disclosure of this information in the annual reports.Practical implicationsThe findings would be useful to the policy-makers and regulators in appraising the governance measures of remuneration arrangement.Originality/valueThis study premises on the Type II agency conflict between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders. Independent directors could not mitigate the Type II agency conflict via the governance of executive remuneration. They are not the effective governance mechanism that the minority shareholders can rely on. The additional analyses provide theoretical implication that the pervasive Type II agency conflict is ameliorated when the CEOs do not have family relationships with the controlling family shareholders.