Kristen Madison

Viewing Family Firm Behavior and Governance Through the Lens of Agency and Stewardship Theories

Agency and stewardship theories are prominent perspectives to examine myriad issues within family firms. Although considered opposing theories, both address the same phenomena: the individual-level behaviors and firm-level governance mechanisms that predict organizational outcomes. Accordingly, we review and synthesize these theories concurrently, using the concepts of behavior and governance as our organizing framework. Our review encompasses 107 family firm articles grounded in agency and/or stewardship theory, published between 2000 and 2014 in 24 journals across several disciplines. Additionally, we identify future research areas that provide scholars opportunities to push theoretical boundaries and offer further insights into the family firm.

Nonfamily Members in Family Firms: A Review and Future Research Agenda:

The study of the roles, impact, and challenges associated with nonfamily members in family firms has generated considerable attention in the literature. To gain an appreciation of this body of knowledge, we systematically review 82 articles on nonfamily members in family firms that were published in 34 journals over the past three decades. We synthesize the literature according to three broad, yet overlapping themes: preemployment considerations, employment considerations, and outcomes of nonfamily employment. We then offer a future research agenda that integrates these themes to guide the advancement of knowledge on nonfamily members in family firms.

Entrepreneurial Team Composition Characteristics and New Venture Performance: A Meta‐Analysis

Upper echelon theory highlights the importance of top management teams in large and established firms; however, effects are not always clear outside of this context. Due to the unique nature of new ventures, the composition of entrepreneurial teams and its effects on performance is worthy of investigation. Accordingly, we meta–analyze the effect of three characteristics of entrepreneurial team composition (i.e., aggregated, heterogeneity, team size) on new venture performance. Our meta–analysis, which includes 55 empirical samples and 8,892 observations, finds significant and unique effects of entrepreneurial team characteristics on new ventures. Based on our findings, we derive avenues for future research.

Variance in Family Members’ Assessments The Importance of Dispersion Modeling in Family Firm Research

The extent to which assessments are shared across family members and generations has been questioned, suggesting that the variability in the family members’ perceptions may convey important family-level information. With this in mind, we theoretically and methodologically introduce dispersion modeling which is designed to use this variance as an important explanatory variable, presenting a framework that can guide scholars in its application. Using field data to apply the framework, we illustrate how this modeling approach helps us understand the dynamic interactions within family firms, and then we offer future research ideas that are best suited to dispersion composition modeling.

Coexisting Agency and Stewardship Governance in Family Firms: An Empirical Investigation of Individual-Level and Firm-Level Effects:

This article theoretically and empirically intertwines agency and stewardship theories to examine their distinct and combined influences on family firms. Primary matched triadic data from CEOs, family employees, and nonfamily employees in 77 family firms suggest that agency and stewardship governance affects individual-level behavior and firm-level performance. Specifically, agent behavior is highest under conditions of coexisting low agency governance and high stewardship governance and is lowest when agency and stewardship governance coexist at high levels. Furthermore, when high levels of agency and stewardship governance coexist, family firm performance is the highest. Theoretical implications and future research directions are discussed.

Is it All About Money? – Affective Commitment and the Difference between Family and Non‐Family Sellers in Buyouts

In this paper we investigate private equity firm perceptions of sellers’ affective deal commitment in buyout transactions. Using a sample of 174 buyouts, we test trust, goal congruence and private equity reputation as potential antecedents of perceived deal commitment. We also examine whether and how different types of sellers, family versus non‐family firms, moderate sources of perceived affective deal commitment. In sum, we find evidence that non‐financial factors play a role in buyouts, particularly for family firm sellers.

The Heterogeneity of Family Firm Ethical Cultures: Current Insights and Future Directions

Family firms are often assumed to have distinct ethical cultures compared to nonfamily firms; however, this assumption neglects to consider the ethics-specific heterogeneity that exists across the landscape of family firms. Therefore, this chapter reviews the literature on family firm ethics, highlighting those vast differences. We identify 29 articles published between 1996 and 2016 that we synthesize by focus: the ethics of family firms versus nonfamily firms, family-related antecedents, and firm-level outcomes of ethical cultures. We present avenues for future research, including the need to investigate how professionalization and context influences family firm ethical cultures.