This article examines the affect of family management on performance of the company. We examine how familiness can provide further insights beyond the classical demographic measures of top management teams (TMTs) in explaining variations in firms' financial performance. We combine arguments on the 'bright' and 'dark' side of family involvement in the firm; we complement positive predictions on family involvement with negative predictions and develop family firm-specific measures of TMTs' familiness. Results indicate that while the presence of a family CEO is beneficial for firm performance, the coexistence of 'factions' in family and non-family managers within the TMT has the potential to create schisms among the subgroups and consequently hurt firm performance. We find support for a hypothesized U-shaped relationship between the ratio of family members in the TMT and firm performance. Additional evidence related to interactions between firm listing and CEO type on firm performance is then presented and discussed.

There has been much debate concerning the performance of family firms and the drivers of their performance. Some scholars have argued that family management is to blame when family firms go wrong; others claim that family management removes costly agency problems and encourages stewardship. Our thesis is that these disagreements can only be resolved by distinguishing among different types of family firms. We argue that family CEOs will outperform in smaller firms with more concentrated ownership and underperform in larger firms with more dispersed ownership; they will do neither where firms are smaller and ownership is more dispersed or firms are larger and ownership is more concentrated.

Despite the increasing attention of management scholars to boards of directors, there is still scant evidence on the antecedents of board task performance. The lack of\ud \ud significant results seems to be due to some theoretical and methodological choices followed by scholars, i.e. the almost exclusive reliance on agency theory and the use of\ud \ud demographic data. Following the call for dismantling the fortresses dominating past studies, this paper contributes to opening the ‘black box’ of boards of directors, developing a conceptual model that considers the impact of board members’ diversity, commitment and critical debate on board task effectiveness in performing its service and control tasks. We collected primary data through a questionnaire survey, and we tested the model controlling for board, firm and industry characteristics. Our findings suggest that (i) the predictors we identified, and particularly the board members’ commitment,\ud \ud are far more important than board demographics to predict board task performance; (ii) firm and industry contexts exert a significant influence on board task performance; (iii) predictors have a different impact on specific sets of tasks. Thus, our findings support the idea that several board characteristics and contingencies at both industry and firm level must be acknowledged in board design

This paper addresses recent calls to narrow the micro–macro gap in management research (Bamberger, 2008), by incorporating a macro-level context variable (country) in exploring micro-level determinants of board effectiveness. Following the integrated model proposed by Forbes and Milliken (1999), we identify three board processes as micro-level determinants of board effectiveness. Specifically, we focus on effort norms, cognitive conflicts and the use of knowledge and skills as determinants of board control and advisory task performance. Further, we consider how two different institutional settings influence board tasks, and how the context moderates the relationship between processes and tasks. Our hypotheses are tested on a survey-based dataset of 535 medium-sized and large industrial firms in Italy and Norway, which are considered to substantially differ along legal and cultural dimensions. The findings show that: (i) Board processes have a larger potential than demographic variables to explain board task performance; (ii) board task performance differs significantly between boards operating in different contexts; and (iii) national context moderates the relationships between board processes and board task performance. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Family firms represent a globally dominant form of organization, yet they confront a steep challenge of finding and managing competent leaders. Sometimes, these leaders cannot be found within the owning family. To date we know little about the governance contexts under which non-family leaders thrive or founder. Guided by concepts from agency theory and behavioural agency theory, we examine the conditions of ownership and leadership that promote superior performance among non-family CEOs of family firms. Our analysis of 893 Italian family firms demonstrates that these leaders outperform when they are monitored by multiple major family owners as opposed to a single owner; they also outperform when they are not required to share power with co-CEOs who are family members, and who may be motivated by parochial family socioemotional priorities