Vincent Molly

Financing Decisions in Family Businesses: A Review and Suggestions for Developing the Field:

Motivated by the growing attention to the financing decisions of family firms, this review brings together the two highly relevant research fields of family business and finance. This study critically reviews 131 articles on financing decisions in family businesses, published between 1977 and 2016 in 64 finance and management journals. We develop a state of the art on family business financing literature and present a model to guide extant and future research by identifying gaps across the theoretical perspectives and across context-specific elements such as family business heterogeneity and country-specific factors.

A family CEO running the family business: Which competencies really matter?

This study aims to increase our understanding of the competencies that are and should be used by family CEOs to achieve success for both the family and business. This quantitative study is based on a survey among family CEOs in Belgian family firms. The results show that the use by the family CEO of family business system competencies significantly increases the financial performance of the company as well as the performance of the family. Notwithstanding this result, it is striking that many family CEOs give little priority to using these family business system competencies compared with other competencies in managing the family business.

Building and maintaining the family business-private equity relationship: An integrated agency-stewardship perspective

Purpose Adopting an integrated agency and stewardship perspective, the purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between family businesses (FBs) and private equity (PE) investors at three stages: entry, cooperation, and exit. Design/methodology/approach This qualitative study combines the perspectives of 11 FB owners and/or managers, seven PE investors, and four intermediaries. The in-depth interviews of this purposive sample are analysed at the intra- and inter-case level using a template analysis approach up to reaching theoretical saturation. Findings Building and maintaining an effective relationship between the FB and the PE investor requires both a stewardship perspective (i.e. reciprocal principal-steward behaviour) and a necessary but insufficient agency perspective (i.e. principal-principal behaviour). Research limitations/implications More large-scale studies with an integrated agency-stewardship perspective on FBs using PE can increase the external validity of the insights from this research to build and maintain an effective relationship between both parties. Practical implications Providing insights into the relationship building process and best practices, this study helps reduce the knowledge and empathy gap that exists between FBs and PE. Originality/value The results clarify the need to reconcile an agency and stewardship perspective to thoroughly understand the relationship and behaviour of FBs and PE investors, and to help the parties understand and benefit from each other’s added value.