Michael Carney

Corporate Governance and Competitive Advantage in Family‐Controlled Firms

Recent attempts to identify the basis of family–controlled firms’ competitive advantage have drawn upon the resource–based view of the firm. This article supplements these efforts and advances the argument that family–controlled firms’ competitive advantage arises from their system of corporate governance. Systems of corporate governance embody incentives, authority patterns, and norms of legitimation that generate particular organizational propensities to create competitive advantages and disadvantages. For comparative purposes, the characteristics of managerial, alliance, and family governance are reviewed. The impact of a familys control rights over a firms assets generates three dominant propensities (parsimony, personalism, and particularism). These propensities give advantages in scarce environments, facilitate the creation and utilization of social capital, and engender opportunistic investment processes. The experience of family–controlled firms in emerging markets is drawn upon to illustrate the argument.

The Adolescence of Family Firm Research: Taking Stock and Planning for the Future

Through its rapid growth during the past decade, family business research has reached its adolescence as a field of study, and family business scholars now regularly contribute interesting and thought-provoking work to top-tier management, entrepreneurship, and finance journals. In this review article, the authors seek to document the growing maturity of family business research and to promote its integration into broader streams of inquiry in the organizational sciences. To do so, the authors describe recent family business research that addresses two fundamental questions: “How do firms differ in terms of their financial performance?” and “How do institutional conditions moderate performance differences between firms?” Based on their review, the authors describe the past and potential future contributions of family business research and conclude that it holds great promise to “give back” and provide meaningful contributions to the general field of management.

Markets, Hierarchies, and Families: Toward a Transaction Cost Theory of the Family Firm:

Why do family businesses exist? What factors explain their versatility, limitations, and success within and across different industrial and geographic contexts? We develop a transaction cost framework that addresses these questions. In doing so, we identify a class of assets we term generic nontradeables (GNTs), that are firm specific, but generic in application. While many types of firms may possess such assets, we reason that family firm governance provides relative advantages in developing, sustaining, and appropriating value from GNTs through combinations with other types of assets. We propose that these advantages, as well as some concomitant disadvantages, explain the versatility, limitations, and success of family business enterprise.

The Coupling of Ownership and Control and the Allocation of Financial Resources: Evidence from Hong Kong

Theoretical and empirical research regarding the impact of corporate ownership on the behaviour and performance of firms have typically focused on consequences stemming from the separation of ownership and control. While large scale business enterprise characterized by such a separation is dominant in the US, Japan and the UK, firms in which ownership and control is coupled in the hands of individuals and their families are apparent in many other large developed economies and are dominant in most emerging markets. This paper examines consequences regarding the generation and allocation of financial resources stemming from the coupling of ownership and control among Hong Kong based firms. In doing so, we join insights from the economics literature regarding the incentive and risk bearing consequences of coupled ownership and control with the extant management, sociology and history literatures regarding Chinese family business groups and develop and six hypotheses pertaining to patterns in the allocation of financial resources. Results indicate that coupled ownership and control is positively related with dividend payout levels and financial liquidity while it is negatively related to investments in capital expenditures. Consistent with these results, we also find that coupled ownership and control is positively related to short-term (accounting) profitability.

A Management Capacity Constraint? Obstacles to the Development of the Overseas Chinese Family Business

Overseas Chinese family business (OCFBs) have gained a reputation for cost efficiency, responsiveness, and flexibility as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and as pioneers of the mainlands industrialization. This success is based upon a relatively simple ‘personally managed’ organization operating within a network of kin and ethnic relations. To what extent are mid-sized OCFBs now able to develop the capacity to compete in new strategic domains and manage more complex value chains? The paper examines competing views of the OCFBs organizational and competitive capabilities. The strategies of 50 mid-sized Hong Kong based manufacturing firms are used to provide insight into the questions of capabilities upgrading and long-term competitiveness in personally managed enterprises. In contrast to prevailing cultural and institutional accounts of OCFB behavior, the paper suggests that current (western) theory of the family firm and of organizational networks provides an alternative explanation of observed investment strategies and organizational structure.

Strategic Innovation and the Administrative Heritage of East Asian Family Business Groups

Using the case of Chinese Family Business Groups (FBGs) in East Asia, this paper examines the relationship between the strategic behaviour exhibited by an organisational form and its administrative heritage. To do so, we trace the origins of the strategic behaviour that scholars commonly attribute to FBGs to the environmental conditions prevailing during their emergence in the turbulent post-Colonial era of East Asia. We explain how fundamental changes brought about by shifts in the post-Cold war environment of East Asia have confronted FBGs with new opportunities and organising imperatives which their administrative heritages have left them ill-equipped to deal with. In concluding, we explain how the lack of fit between a dominant organisational form and contemporaneous environmental conditions may have significant implications for the organisations themselves and the economies whose landscapes they dominate.

What Do We Know About Private Family Firms? A Meta‐Analytical Review

The universe of family firms is heterogeneous, and findings gleaned from publicly listed firms may not apply to the ubiquitous, but less frequently studied, privately held family firm (PFF). As PFFs are insulated from capital market pressures, owner–managers have greater latitude in setting strategic goals, which may result in different strategic choices and performance outcomes. By employing meta–analytical techniques on 48 studies conducted in nine countries, we synthesize prior PFF research. We show that PFFs prefer more conservative strategies, but contrary to received wisdom, this risk aversion does not hurt their performance. We conclude with an agenda for future research.

Airport governance reform: a strategic management perspective

Reform of airport governance structures through corporatization, privatization and other approaches to commercialization is intended to attain a number benefits for air transport system stakeholders. While reformers often want managers to bring a commercial and strategic orientation to the operation of an airport they often create regulatory and governance structures that inhibit such an approach. This paper shows how different modes of governance tend to create trade-offs between stakeholder outcomes. It is suggested that different governance modes embody constraints and incentives that determines the type and quantity of managerial and financial resources that private sector agents will bring to the operation of airports. Additionally, the effectiveness of particular governance modes depends upon national institutional context.

Public, private and mixed ownership and the performance of international airlines

Many airlines are neither completely public nor private enterprises but have hybrid or mixed public-private ownership. Theory and evidence regarding the performance of private, public and mixed ownership are addressed in the context of the international airline industry. The study empirically examines the influence of an airlines ownership structure on multiple dimensions of its performance. In general, the results indicate that public sector airlines under-perform relative private sector airlines. In addition, we find that airlines with mixed ownership tend to perform better than public sector airlines, but worse than private sector carriers.

Business Group Performance in China: Ownership and Temporal Considerations

We address the institutional voids hypothesis, which suggests affiliation with a business group will improve a firms performance in circumstances of poor-quality institutions and extensive market failures. We hypothesize that initial positive effects of group affiliation should decline as the quality of market institutions improves. Further, we hypothesize that differences in state and private ownership will influence the value and persistence of firm affiliation. Using data on 476 publicly listed firms in 1999 and 467 matched firms in 2004, we find support for a temporal hypothesis that affiliation with a business group improves performance, but the value of group affiliation declines over time. We also find support for a state ‘helping hand’ hypothesis that suggests firms with high levels of state ownership initially experienced an amplified value effect from their group affiliation, which disappeared by 2004. The results suggest that Chinas policy makers are beginning to establish an institutional and market infrastructure that is conducive to entry by unaffiliated, freestanding firms.