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This study investigates effects of corporate governance on the financial performance of family-controlled firms and how these effects differ between common law and civil law jurisdictions.

This study applies a number of corporate governance measures to the largest 243 publicly listed family-controlled businesses worldwide from 2009 to 2018. The corporate governance measures include board independence, board gender diversity, corporate governance index (CGI) and the percentage of family ownership.

The empirical evidence indicates that board independence improves financial performance; this positive effect is more pronounced in common law than civil law jurisdictions. Board gender diversity has a negative impact on financial performance under common law but a positive impact in civil law jurisdictions. Moreover, the CGI and family ownership structure are positively associated with financial performance, and no difference is found between the two jurisdiction types. In addition, family ownership negatively moderates CGI in civil law countries only.

This study provides new insight on the relevance of considering jurisdictional differences when examining the effect of corporate governance on performance. The study also addresses important concerns in family business research relating to unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity. Implications of these for research and practice are discussed in the paper.

The paper aims to examine the effect of corporate governance (CG) on innovation investment, with consideration of ownership types and legal jurisdictions.

The authors' empirical analysis is based on a sample of publicly listed family businesses (FBs) from the top-500-list that matched worldwide with non-family counterparts from 2009 to 2018. The study uses a holistic measure of CG to mitigate the conflicting impact of individual CG components found in prior studies. This measure is applied to examine the moderating role of firm ownership type and legal jurisdiction.

The authors' results demonstrate that CG positively influences innovation investment. This positive relationship is more pronounced in FBs than in non-family businesses (NFBs) and is more prevalent in civil law economies than in common law economies.

The study holistically examines the effect of CG, capturing the combination of all individual governance mechanisms and their influence on innovation investment. The study further shows that comprehensive CG has diverse impacts on innovation investment when considering family control and legal jurisdiction.

Prior family business research has been dominated by an agency theory perspective, narrow definitions of what constitutes family wealth, and a preoccupation with business governance mechanisms to the exclusion of family governance mechanisms. This chapter presents the findings of examining the role of a broader range of governance mechanisms (for the business; for the family) in achieving more comprehensive wealth (economic and non-economic) family business goals in the Australian context. Based on survey responses from around 400 family businesses, the findings from this study show that both family and business governance mechanisms contribute significantly to achieving both the business’s financial performance and the achievement of family-centered goals that are important to the owning family. The results also suggest that the relationship between governance and performance in the family business context is much more complex than that acknowledged in prior research and has implications for both future research and practice.

The increasing prominence of the use of the term information governance (IG) raises fundamental questions about the role and relevance of records management in today’s organisations. As a starting point, this paper aims to explore the relationship between records management and IG by considering both recordkeeping and non-recordkeeping perspectives.

The research discusses literature chiefly from 2013 to the present to shed light on how discussion of the relationship between records management and IG has evolved over the past few years.

A range of perspectives on the relationship between records management and IG was evident and, notably, a lack of direct engagement from the records management community. Taking the positive perspectives that emerged, IG was seen as an opportunity for records management. By contrast, others regarded it as a necessary successor to records management, the latter perceived as too associated with the paper era to be capable of meeting the organisational information needs of today. Equally, others were sceptical about the real difference IG offered, suggesting it was in part a rebranding exercise, which did not necessarily articulate anything fundamentally new.

Defining literature in the broadest sense, this paper offers a high-level review of some of the recent discussions that have taken place in a wide variety of contexts around the relationship between records management and IG. It includes journal articles, books, online discussions from professional forums and listservs, vendor contributions, opinion-pieces and blogs and in particular focuses on presenting a range of viewpoints from individuals operating within various information-related spaces, including records and information management, IG, and information technology. It is hoped that this preliminary research will encourage further engagement on the subject from recordkeeping professionals.

This article examines the relationship between financial risk management and succession planning in family businesses. Motivated by the Theory of Planned Behaviour, we hypothesize that the use of professional risk management practices is associated with an increased likelihood that businesses adopt professionalized approaches to succession planning. We then investigate if succession planning professionalization is, in turn, positively related to the financial performance of family businesses.

We apply binary probit and ordered dependent variable regressions to unique data generated from a survey sample of Australian family businesses. To check the robustness of our results to potential endogeneity concerns we apply difference tests to propensity score matched sub-samples from our original cohort of respondents.

The results show that, in contrast to verbal or absent succession arrangements, formal written succession plans are both positively associated with the use of financial risk management practices and with superior financial performance in family businesses.

Our arguments and findings suggest that active financial risk management provides a platform for planning succession in family businesses, and that this links with improved short-term financial performance. In light of the critical role that succession plays in ensuring long-term business sustainability, our findings provide important and novel insights into the conditions under which family businesses are most likely to use formal professionalized succession planning.