Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of the often questioned willingness of family businesses (FBs) to seek external advice on challenges they face. Design/methodology/approach – Mixed methods were employed gaining 140 responses to a survey of FB CEOs on their use of advice, followed by 51 semi-structured interviews of FB owners, managers and advisers. It drew upon institutional theory and those concerning both trust and organisational knowledge creation; also upon experiential knowledge gained in advising FBs. Findings – Cost was found to deter use of professional advice, also unawareness of where it was to be found. Dissatisfaction with many advisers’ “soft” skills was prevalent. Clients took as given advisers’ technical knowledge; empathy and listening skills being the discriminants of successful practice. Effective means of skills creation were identified but seen to be obtained fortuitously, not systematically. The professional institutions of accountants, the most frequently used professional advisers, require tertiary institutions seeking their accreditation to develop their students’ “generic skills”, including “the ability to listen effectively”: conditions not being complied with. However, advice-seeking is found to be greater than assumed because of an unexpected resort to peers, often through networking. Widespread peers’ recommendations of professional advisers impart instantaneous “vicarious” trust, found to be more common than the “slow maturing” kind posited by previous researchers. Originality/value – This paper offers a rarely recorded FB client perspective on their use of external advice. It extends understanding of the trust upon which they rely. It discloses how some achieve a mutual learning that expands understanding of organisational knowledge creation. It describes a route, “shadowing”, through which professional advisers have achieved outstanding performance.

This study aims to explore the financial and governance factors that determine related party transactions (RPTs) in the developing country context of Jordan.. To do so, a multiple regression model was developed and used. Results show that RPTs are negatively related with CEO-duality and board independence, while they are positively related with firm leverage, ownership concentration, board size, and audit quality. However, no statistically significant relation was found between RPTs and firm profitability or board political connections. Several of these relations (or lack of relations) are contrary to the findings of extant studies from more-developed countries, and can arguably be attributed to the prevalence of the closelyheld business model in Jordan, where, regardless of the firm's financial conditions, high ownership concentration and close relations among board and top executive management positions are common, and the demand for an audit service of high quality is limited. Practical implications of these findings include that regulatory authorities in Jordan should enhance regulations and corporate governance codes to protect small shareholders and other stakeholders and restrict the power of dominant shareholders that makes them able to engage in illegitimate RPTs.. In doing so, it also has to improve its monitoring of companies more likely to engage in such RPTs.

Considerable research has examined the relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) and performance. ESE refers to the strength of the individuals' beliefs that they are capable of successfully performing the roles and tasks of entrepreneurs. Whereas prior ESE research has a non-Indigenous focus, this study addresses a gap in the literature by examining the relationship between ESE and perceived individual success in Indigenous nascent entrepreneurs. Whereas entrepreneurship from a non-Indigenous perspective is focused upon the commercialization of innovation and economic objectives, Indigenous entrepreneurship has both economic and non-economic objectives as desired outcomes. The research identified entrepreneurial experience-ESE and ESE-perceived individual success relationships. Education was inversely related to entrepreneurial experience.

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