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This article explores psychological ownership (PO) in family firms (FFs); its impact on interpersonal relationships, attitudes and behaviors within the organization; and its importance for long-term success. It also highlights the factors that contribute to PO in these types of businesses.

The article conducts a literature review that utilizes existing research to delve into the phenomenon of PO within the context of FFs.

The article emphasizes that PO significantly impacts employee behavior and attitudes toward FFs. It shows the favorable influence of PO on employees' conduct and mindset. However, excessive PO can lead to disputes and obstruct the transfer of control.

The success of family businesses depends on nurturing strong, positive PO in future generations and among nonfamily members.

The article contributes to PO literature in FFs by analyzing its influence on FFs. It highlights factors affecting PO formation and its consequences and highlights novel lines of future research.

Our paper seeks to further understand how family involvement in management influences firm growth.

Using a sample of small high-tech firms, we classify three different types of firms: family firms managed by family-CEOs, family firms managed by non-family CEOs and non-family firms.

Consistent with our expectations, we show that firms managed by family-CEOs have less firm growth in comparison with the other two groups. When the family firm is managed by non-family CEOs, the presence of another family member in management positions has a negative impact on firm growth. Finally, we found that founder-led family firms have better firm growth than descendant-led family firms.

Implications for the theory of family firms are discussed.

The value of the present study is to analyse in depth the heterogeneity of the family business trying to close the gap by exploring the effect of family involvement on small firm growth. Thus, we will find different behaviours of these family companies, depending on the family member’s presence in management positions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible causes of the heterogeneous productivity observed in Spanish firms, finding evidence of a link between managerial capability and higher productivity in the context of family firms. Also, innovative human resource policies are much more frequently found in companies where there is a high level of management capability.

Productivity differences in Spanish family firms are, for the first time, analysed from a managerial view, and using multiple correspondence analysis (MCA).

This paper proposes a way to measure managerial capability. Innovative human resource policies are much more frequently found in companies with high levels of management capability. The authors show that sustained competitive advantage is not just a function of single or isolated components, but rather a combination of human capital elements. Besides, a clear association between high managerial capability and performance in family firms is established. Thus, better management skills enable Spanish family firms to design the necessary strategies and internal structures to facilitate their adjustment to the business environment, and, thereby, achieve operational performance gains.

This paper proposes a way to measure managerial capability and its association with productivity in Spanish family firms using MCA. The authors also show a clear positive association between high managerial capability and performance in family firms. Thus, better management skills enable Spanish family firms to achieve operational performance gains.

Este artículo explora las posibles causas de la heterogeneidad observada en la productividad de las empresas españolas, buscando un vínculo entre la capacidad de gestión y la productividad en el contexto de las empresas familiares. Además, se muestra cómo las políticas innovadoras de recursos humanos se encuentran con mayor frecuencia en las empresas donde hay una mejor capacidad de gestión.

Por primera vez, se analizan las diferencias de productividad en las empresas familiares españolas desde el punto de vista de la gestión empresarial, utilizando análisis de correspondencias múltiples (MCA).

Este trabajo mide la capacidad de gestión de una forma innovadora. Las políticas de recursos humanos se encuentran con mayor frecuencia en las empresas donde hay una alta capacidad de gestión. Se muestra que la ventaja competitiva de la empresa no es la suma individual de cada elemento, sino más bien una combinación de elementos de capital humano. Además, se establece una clara asociación entre la capacidad de gestión y los resultados en las empresas familiares. Por lo tanto, la mejora de las habilidades de la gestión empresarial permite a las empresas familiares españolas diseñar las estrategias y estructuras internas necesarias para facilitar su adaptación al entorno empresarial, y de ese modo, lograr mejoras en los resultados.

Este artículo muestra la asociación entre la capacidad de gestión y la productividad de una forma original, a través de análisis de correspondencias múltiples (MCA). Establece una clara asociación positiva entre la capacidad de gestión y los resultados en las empresas familiares. Por lo tanto, la mejora de las habilidades de gestión permite a las empresas familiares españolas lograr mejoras en los resultados.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of female CEO board members on listed family firms’ corporate default risk, integrating upper echelons theory with social role theory and the socio-emotional wealth approach and proxying default risk with the Black–Scholes–Merton model. It also searches for possible differences attributable to the type of female CEO.

This study is applied to a longitudinal sample of listed US family firms. After a preliminary analysis of the main descriptive, several models are estimated with the system GMM estimator, which is a panel data estimator. The models are dynamic, including the lagged value of the dependent variable. In addition, the model estimation is repeated with a different measure of default risk, for robustness.

This research findings show that default risk diminishes in the presence of a female CEO, whose reduction is even greater if she is a family member. The results are proven to be robust to the measure for proxying default risk.

This study primarily contributes to the existing literature by exploring a possible link between female CEOs, particularly those with a family affiliation, and a lower level of default risk in family firms. It also provides practical implications for policymakers, who would be advised to promote conditions enabling women to contribute towards family business viability. In addition, this study offers encouragement for family business owners to value the potential of their female family members in company succession processes.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and the family control of the company influence the performance of underachieving firms and how they contribute to economic recovery.

The authors test the authors’ predictions on a unique and representative sample of 1,500 Spanish small firms in high and medium technology manufacturing and service industries. Given the nature of the dependent variable, the authors estimate a series of regression models to test the hypotheses. In addition, the authors consider two interaction terms where the underperforming firms’ variable is interacted with family firms and EO.

The results of analyses show that both EO and family ownership separately increase subsequent performance for underachieving firms.

The study contributes to expand the literature on underperforming firms analysing how strategic and structural factors affect the performance of firms that face an economic downturn. It also provides some guidance for practitioners on the decision and contexts that better serve the economic recovery of underperforming firms.

El artículo analiza cómo la orientación emprendedora y el control familiar de la empresa influyen en el desempeño de las empresas con bajo rendimiento y cómo contribuyen a su recuperación económica.

Testamos nuestras hipótesis utilizando una muestra única y representativa de 1,500 pequeñas empresas españolas en industrias de fabricación y servicios de alta y media tecnología. Dada la naturaleza de nuestra variable dependiente, estimamos una serie de modelos de regresión para probar nuestras hipótesis. Además, consideramos dos términos de interacción donde la variable de las empresas de bajo rendimiento interactúa con las empresas familiares y la orientación emprendedora.

Los resultados de nuestros análisis muestran que las empresas con mayor orientación emprendedora y cuya propiedad sea familiar aumentan, por separado, el rendimiento posterior de las empresas, especialmente para las de bajo rendimiento.

El estudio contribuye a expandir la literatura sobre las empresas con bajo rendimiento al analizar cómo los factores estratégicos y estructurales impactan en el desempeño de las empresas que enfrentan una recesión económica. También brinda orientación a los profesionales sobre la decisión y los contextos que mejor sirven para la recuperación económica de las empresas con bajo rendimiento.

Upper echelons theory (UET) stands that cognitive bases of the CEO influence the field of vision and interpretation of the environment and affect its decisions about the firm. The main objective of the paper is to see if there are different CEO profiles, which can be associated with different strategic management choices.

Using a representative sample of 1,236 small firms in high- and medium-high-technology, both in industrial and service sectors, the authors identify five CEO typologies through cluster analysis. The classification is based on CEO's personal characteristics such as education, tenure in the company or entrepreneurial experience. Multivariate analysis is carried out to establish the possible association between belonging to these clusters and some strategic decisions such as orientation towards innovation, efficiency or internationalisation. The unit of analysis is the firm focusing on the CEO.

The authors conclude that it is possible to classify the CEOs of these companies into five well-differentiated groups, with specific profiles. We find a significant association between belonging to a CEO profile and strategic choices taken in the firm. Managers who have been CEOs in several companies and have some entrepreneurial experience frequently guide the company towards innovation and internationalisation. CEOs with a lot of experience but limited to a single company often look for process efficiency.

Furthermore, it is observed that the belonging of these clusters is not evenly distributed in the group of companies analysed. Instead, depending on size and family / no family issues, the authors find a different presence of the CEO typologies.

The work provides relevant information in the field of small-, high- and medium-high-technology companies in relation to the profile of the CEO.

La teoría de los estratos superiores (UET) sostiene que la base cognitiva del CEO influye en el campo de visión y la interpretación del entorno y afecta sus decisiones sobre la empresa. El objetivo principal del documento es ver si existen diferentes perfiles de CEO, que pueden asociarse con diferentes opciones de gestión estratégica.

Utilizando una muestra representativa de 1,236 pequeñas empresas de alta y media–alta tecnología tanto en el sector industrial como en el de servicios, identificamos cinco tipologías de CEO a través de análisis Cluster. La clasificación se hace en base a características personales del CEO tales como Formación, antigüedad en la empresa o experiencia emprendedora. Se llevan a cabo análisis multivariante para establecer la posible asociación entre la pertenencia a uno de esos clusters y algunas decisiones estratégicas como la orientación a la innovación, la eficiencia o la internacionalización. La unidad de análisis es la empresa focalizándonos en el CEO.

Encontramos que es posible clasificar a los CEOs de estas empresas en cinco grupos bien diferenciados, con perfiles específicos. Encontramos una asociación significativa entre la pertenencia a un perfil de CEO y las decisiones estratégicas tomadas en la firma. Los directivos que han sido CEO en varias empresas y tienen alguna experiencia emprendedora orientan con frecuencia la compañía hacia la innovación y la internacionalización. Los CEOS con mucha experiencia, pero limitada a una única empresa, buscan a menudo la eficiencia en los procesos.

Además, se observa que la pertenencia a esos clusters no se distribuye de manera uniforme en el colectivo de empresas analizado, sino que, dependiendo de si la empresa es industrial o de servicios, de su tamaño o si es o no familiar, encontramos distinta presencia de las tipologías de CEO.

El trabajo aporta una información relevante en el ámbito de las empresas pequeñas de alta y media alta tecnología en relación con las características del CEO.

Absorptive capacity (AC), the ability to leverage external knowledge for innovation, helps explain the mixed findings on family firms' (FFs) innovation performance. Our research focuses on the chief executive officer (CEO)’s role – whether family or non-family and founding or later generation – in influencing AC. We also explore how firm size and environmental dynamism affect these relationships, offering insights into varying AC levels among FFs.

Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models were estimated to test the hypotheses using a sample of 364 FFs in Spain.

FFs’ AC is greater when the CEO is a family member, and even more so when the family CEO belongs to the founding family generation. While AC diminishes in larger FFs, this effect is mitigated when the CEO is a family member. The predicted moderating effect of environmental dynamics is not supported by the analyses.

This paper adds insights about the drivers of heterogeneity in innovation among FFs, addressing recent calls for more nuanced views of how family members drive the strategic behavior of the business and incorporating considerations of different types of FFs based on the identity of the firm CEO. The results overall support the theoretical claims and also open up important questions for future studies.

A great deal of research has examined the relationship between a single CEO attribute and a single measure of firm performance; no attempts have been made to integrate them to create a more global vision of both. Therefore, trying to answer new calls from Wang et al. (2016) or Liu, Fisher and Chen (2018) about a more global vision of the CEO characteristics, the authors are going to take a step forward to combine different CEO characteristics with different firm performance measure in order to show that a certain managerial profile would have an impact on several variables of firm performance. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

Using a sample of 1,236 small firms in high- and medium-high-technology sectors and through the Canonical Correlation Analysis, the authors are able to create different CEO’s profiles that influence on different combinations of firm performance variables.

The authors obtain different CEO’s profiles that influence on different combinations of firm performance variables. Each CEO profile will enhance or diminish one kind of performance measure. The authors found that on the one hand, young, well-educated with external experience CEO profile will enhance innovative performance and firm growth, and on the other hand, old and more internal and external experience CEO profile will enhance the exploitation of external knowledge.

Through this analysis, the authors will be able to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the predictions about the role of CEOs in small firms.

This paper investigates the impact of board gender diversity on the readability of the annual reports of family-controlled public companies.

Grounded in the premises of the restricted and extended views of the socioemotional wealth (SEW) approach and executive power theory, this paper explores the ways in which family-affiliated female directors influence report readability in a sample of 133 publicly traded US companies listed in the Fortune 1,000. We use the system GMM estimator, which deals with two key sources of endogeneity by controlling first for reverse causality, using the lags of the endogenous variables as instruments, and then for omitted variables, capturing the individual effect.

Our analysis confirms that the significant enhancement in annual report readability is associated with the presence of female family directors, particularly those who are insiders within the company. In contrast, non-family female directors and family outsider directors appear to have a negative impact on annual report readability.

While scholars have increasingly focused on variations in annual report readability among family firms, the contribution of female directors to this phenomenon has received minimal attention. In our study, we integrate the theories of restricted and extended SEW perspectives with the theory of women’s executive power within the board. This integration is essential for considering two critical factors: firstly, the primacy of their SEW objectives, and, secondly, their legitimacy within the board.

This paper aims to recognize whether occupational pension scheme (OPS) is offered in a varied set of measures intended to design a coherent human resources management of people. Second, the authors will study the relationship of these OPS with job satisfaction and job change. The interest of this ultimate goal lies in the relationship between job satisfaction and employee motivation, commitment and loyalty.

Statistical methodology is carried out from three approaches. First, a descriptive analysis to define what type of companies are offering these OPS and what positions are occupying the OPS beneficiaries. Second, an exploratory analysis is conducted to establish associations between variables. The authors use the X2 tests with contingency tables and ANOVA of one and two factors. In all cases, the requirement of homoscedasticities is checked through Levene test. Third, the authors conduct a joint analysis between the studied variables. Multiple correspondence analysis is used to analyze the association between certain characteristics of the firm and the fact to offer OPS and other social benefits. Finally, to assess the potential impact of OPS on the decision to change the job, the authors conduct a binary logistic regression analysis, in which the authors used control variables of certain characteristics of the individual and the company.

Companies who develop the most innovative human resources management policies offering more training, more social benefits and incentives, are also most likely to implement OPS. The OPS beneficiaries have higher levels of satisfaction and are less likely to change the job, regardless of the position held and salary.

To the extent that the future is perceived as more uncertain, the savings will be more oriented toward prevision. OPS can be a saving instrument with broad appeal for business and workers. And of course, it can be a tool of differentiation in the recruitment policy, which attract workers to the company over other competitors which do not offer this kind of benefits.