Editorial

• Author: Chi‐Nien Chung,Gonzalo Jimenez,Sanjay Goel,Ruth V. Aguilera,Till Talaulicar
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/corg.12112
• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Date: 01 May 2015

Editorial

Special Issue on “Cross-National Perspectives on

Ownership and Governance in Family Firms”

Ruth V. Aguilera*, Till Talaulicar, Chi-Nien Chung,

Gonzalo Jimenez and Sanjay Goel

INTRODUCTION

This special issue is devoted to studies of ownership and

governance of familyf‌irms in a comparative institutional

framework. Family f‌irms as an ownership form dominate

both emerging and advanced economies and account for the

majority of f‌irms worldwide (Astrachan & Shanker, 2003;

Claessens, Djankov,& Lang, 2000; La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes,

& Shleifer, 1999). They are estimated to create more than 70

percent of global gross domestic product and comprise about

80 percent of all business enterprises in the US (Astrachan &

Shanker, 2003). While they are mostly small-to-medium in

size (Faccio & Lang, 2002), family f‌irms are also well repre-

sented among publicly listed and large-sized organizations

(Anderson & Reeb,2003; Masulis, Pham, & Zein, 2011; Morck,

Wolfenzon, & Yeung, 2005). For instance, fam ily f‌irms consti-

tute over 35 percent of the S&P 500 Industrials (Anderson &

Reeb, 2003) and one-third of total shareholdings in Germany

are family shareholdings (Franks & Mayer, 2001). Family

businesses differ from non-family f‌irms, particularly with re-

spect to their governance arrangements. In a family-owned

business, family members tend to control and directly inf‌lu-

ence the f‌irm. However, this ownership and involvement of

the family can take various forms as these f‌irms may also be

listed on stock exchanges (Masulis et al., 2011), include non-

family owners (Villalonga & Amit, 2006), and count with the

engagement of independent board members (Anderson &

Reeb, 2004) and professional top executives (Patel & Cooper,

2014). Therefore,family business research tends to be a study

of a specif‌ic ownership type and governance form.

Ownership and governance in family f‌irms have attracted

broad scholarly attention, not just in management, but also in

economics, f‌inance, accounting, psychology, and sociology as

family involvement has the potential to inf‌luence key f‌irm out-

comes, such as employee retention, goal setting, strategic and

operational behavior, as well as social and f‌inancial

performance. Researchers have drawn on various theoretical

perspectives –including agency (Schulze, Lubatkin, & Dino,

2003), stewardship (Eddleston & Kellermanns, 2007), socio-

emotional wealth (Gómez-Mejía, Cruz, Berrone, & De Castro,

2011), social identity (Deephouse & Jaskiewicz, 2013), the

resource-based view (Habbershon & Williams, 1999), and,

more recently, institutional theory (Miller, Le Breton-Miller, &

Lester, 2013) –to investigate the different types of governance

systems, their determinants, and their implications for a variety

of stakeholders such as family,outside minority investors, gov-

ernments, non-family managers, analysts, employees, credi-

tors, and/or society at large. Family business studies cover a

wide range of institutional environments in which family f‌irms

operate and where families are embedded within different in-

stitutional logics. While family business research f‌lourishes

due to the prevalence and signif‌icance of family f‌irms, extant

research shows that there is a double-edge of “familiness”

(Chrisman, Chua, & Litz, 2004; Eddleston & Kellermanns,

2007; Miller, Le Breton-Miller, & Scholnick, 2008). On the one

hand, the distinctive and peculiar features of family f‌irms can

make family governance a value-creating resource due to, inter

alia, family f‌irms’ownership remediating some of the agency

problems of widely held non-family f‌irms and strengthening

f‌irm coordination (Chrisman et al., 2004). On the other hand,

the intrinsic characteristics of family f‌irms can potentially be

value-destroying due to family ownership leading to, for in-

stance, partial decision making, nepotism, and self-dealing

(Schulze, Lubatkin, Dino, & Buchholtz, 2001). Despite the rele-

vance of these core family business topics, many of the causal

antecedents, underlying mechanisms, and key implications of

family governance and ownership still remain ambiguous

(Miller, Le Breton-Miller, Lester, & Cannella, 2007; Morck &

Yeung, 2003; van Essen, Carney, Gedajlovic, & Heugens,

2015). There is growing evidence that the institutional environ-

ment can shape the effects and the effectiveness of various

ownership patterns and governance arrangements (Aguilera

& Crespí-Cladera, 2012; Amit, Ding, Villalonga, & Zhang,

2015; Banalieva, Eddleston, & Zellweger, 2015; Carney, van

Essen, Gedajlovic, & Heugens, 2015; Cruz, Larraza-Kintana,

Garcés-Galdeano, & Berrone, 2014; Peng & Jiang, 2010).

© 2015 JohnWiley & Sons Ltd

doi:10.1111/corg.12112

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Corporate Governance: An International Review, 2015, 23(3): 161–166