Performance and Behavior of Family Firms

Family involvement characterizes a large number of firms around the world and is thought to significantly impact their strategies behavior and performance. Family involvement occurs when a family exerts control over the firm through ownership and management. When family involvement leads to intentions to pursue particularistic goals and strategies controlling families are more likely to exert a significant influence on firm strategies behavior and performance. Indeed intentions imply that a firms strategic behaviors will be oriented toward preserving the economic and socioemotional value of the firm for the family in the long term. Hence the essence of a family firm is thought to be a function of a familys influence on the culture functioning and behavior of the firm owing to the pursuit of a familys vision for the firm.As a result family firm behavior is expected to be distinct from those in non-family firms. Despite the inherent differences between family and non-family firms and heterogeneity among family firms family involvement is under-researched in organizational studies which limits the generalization of findings and leads to theoretical ambiguity. Financial strategic decisions and activities may be key to understanding differences between family and non-family firms.Therefore we invited researchers to shed light on how a family uses its influence to affect financial strategies behavior and firm performance.