دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی ویژگی شرکت های خانوادگی: اطلاعات در مالکیت، نسبت خانوادگی و حاکمیت - اشپرینگر 2018

Abstract

Family firms are often considered characteristically different from non-family firms. However, our understanding of family firms suffers from an inability to identify them in total population data; information is rarely available regarding owners, their kinship, and their involvement in firm governance. We present a method for identifying domiciled family firms using register data; this method offers greater accuracy than previous methods. We apply this method to Swedish data concerning firm ownership, governance, and kinship from 2004 to 2010. We find that the family firm is a significant organizational form, contributing over one third of all employment and gross domestic product (GDP). Family firms are common in most industries and range in size. Furthermore, we find that, compared to private non-family firms, family firms have fewer total assets, employment, and sales and carry higher solidity, although family firms are more profitable. These differences diminish with firm size. We conclude that the term “family firm” includes a large variety of firms, and we call for increased attention to their heterogeneity.

Concluding discussion

This paper suggests that family firms are a prevalent and significant business model: they employ one third of the Swedish working population and generate an equivalent share of Swedish GDP. Our results demonstrate the need for knowledge and consideration of family firm dynamics among researchers and policy makers when designing measures aimed towards employment and economic growth. Although the economic significance of family firms has long been hypothesized, research has been limited by the inability to identify large parts of the population of family firms. Most previous research on family businesses has been restricted in its range, for example only investigating listed limited liability firms or using case studies. A large part of the family firm population has therefore been excluded from previous analyses. An exception that is closely related to our study is the work of Bjuggren et al. (2011), who used total population data to identify family firms in Sweden. Our results are consistent with theirs, although we found that family firms contributed a greater share of employment and GDP. This discrepancy likely arises because Bjuggren et al. (2011) were unable to study kinship for the entire population and therefore included a smaller range of family firms. We contribute to the current literature by solving several methodological issues associated with identifying family firms and by establishing the first description of domiciled family firms across an entire economy.