This paper challenges the prevalent notion that family-owned firms are more risk averse than publicly owned firms. Using behavioral theory, we argue that for family firms, the primary reference point is the loss of their socioemotional wealth, and to avoid those losses, family firms are willing to accept a significant risk to their performance; yet at the same time, they avoid risky business decisions that might aggravate that risk. Thus, we propose that the predictions of behavioral theory differ depending on family ownership. We confirm our hypotheses using a population of 1,237 family-owned olive oil mills in Southern Spain who faced the choice during a 54-year period of becoming a member of a cooperative, a decision associated with loss of family control but lower business risk, or remaining independent, which preserves the family's socioemotional wealth but greatly increases its performance hazard. As shown in this study, family firms may be risk willing and risk averse at the same time.

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Drawing on data based on the entire population of Spanish newspapers over 27 years , this study shows that firm performance and business risk are much stronger predictors of chief executive tenure when a firm's owners and its executive have family ties and that the organizational consequences of CEO dismissal are more favorable when the replaced CEO is a member of the family owning the firm. The study also demonstrates that executives operating under weakly relational (less ambiguous) contracts are held more accountable for firm performance and business risk outcomes, even under nonfamily contracting.The present study examines a variant of the agency contract, one that involves family ties between principal and agent. We argue that in such family-related contracting, the exchange departs from purely economic motives and that family bonds between principal and agent have as a consequence forms of behavior different from economic rationality. Specifically, we hypothesize that family-related contracting decouples agent's employment from performance and business risk and that the termination of agents who enjoy family status has a salutary effect on firm survival. Empirical results comparing family and nonfamily contracting support these hypotheses. Furthermore, we found that executives operating under more strongly relational contracts tend to be held less accountable for observed results, even under nonfamily contracting. A relational contract is one that broadly states the terms and objectives of an agency relationship. Such contracts are ambiguous rather than explicit; the parties "do not agree on detailed plans of action but on goals and objectives" (Milgrom & Roberts, 1992: 131).The study makes five important contributions to the firm governance literature. First, prior research has not examined the differences between familyrelated and non-family-related contracting. Therefore, the present study advances theoretical understanding of relational contracts, where emotional rather than rational criteria govern the terms of the exchange. Second, the study suggests that family contracting is more likely to increase agency costs as a result of executive entrenchment. Furthermore, the study suggests that when firms engaged in family contracting put safeguards in place to curb these agency costs, firm survival improves. In prior theoretical work on agency theory, scholars have generally assumed that the threat of "moral hazard" and the costs of safeguarding against it are lowest in closely held firms because personal involvement by owner-managers supposedly eliminates the agency problem resulting from the separation of ownership and control (Jensen & Meckling, 1976). Third, the study examines how the nature of a position affects the strength of a relational contract and the implications this has for executive monitoring.Fourth, in a broader sense this study makes a contribution to management theory and practice by addressing the family business research lacunae. Our own reading of this literature confirms the disconce...

A descriptive-exploratory analysis of assurance practices is presented in this paper, by analysing the patterns of sustainability assurance reporting in two national contexts with different levels of assurance activity (Italy and the U.S.) over a period of 11 years (2003/2013). The study is based on theoretical insights drawn from institutional sociology and normativity production. It is framed both in the Italian situation, where assurance statements consistently include a narrow set of formal and procedural communications, and in an unsettled situation in the U.S., where assurance activity is more incipient, but where experimentation in substantial assurance disclosure practices has more room to develop. Its main implication is that the diffusion of sustainability assurance and the creation of sustainability assurance disclosure norms are not without its cost: information quality does not increase with patterned practice. The results also point towards the noteworthy role of specific professionals in the earlier and later stages of assurance practice norms. They reveal a significant influence of non-Big4 firms (mainly certification bodies and consulting and engineering firms) in the diffusion of sustainability assurance disclosure norms. In contrast, the Big4 firms appear to be positively associated with the narrowing down of the assurance focus to a selected subset of this activity in later stages of the development of the assurance norm. In this regard, this study provides insight into the circumstantial-but relevant-carrier role of the Big4 firms in determining what "assurance" means.

A cornerstone in ÿnance theory continues to be the positive relationship between risk and return in spite of Fama and French (The Journal of Finance 47(2) (1992) 427-65) and several later papers ÿnding no relationship between the two variables. Twelve years earlier, Bowman (Sloan Management Review 1980, pp. 17-31) studied the same relationship from organization theory, achieving similar results with accounting data, and developing a whole research stream known as "Bowman's paradox". This stream has contributed to some curious and interesting ideas that could also be applied to other di erent streams: new risk measures, managerial goal selection, response to the decline in the organization, diversiÿcation strategy on risk and return, among others. Similar to the ÿnancial stream, a number of researchers have tried to study this issue from the strategic management perspective. Their inconclusive results have generated a considerable controversy, keeping this research stream alive. In this work, we describe and explore this phenomenon from "Bowman's paradox", theoretical explanations, criticisms and future orientations. ?