The Salience of Market, Bureaucratic, and Clan Controls in the Management of Family Firm Transitions: Some Tentative Australian Evidence

Abstract

Despite the numerical and economic significance of family businesses to Australia, they are not extensively researched. This paper reports some of the results from a nationwide study of Australian family‐owned businesses that sought to ascertain and understand their management and control practices. In particular, the paper assesses the organizational transitions of Australian family firms in terms of their dominant control practices. These control measures are evaluated according to Ouchi's classification of market, bureaucratic, and clan controls. The salience of these different forms of control serves to identify distinctive patterns that define periods of organizational passage (life cycles).

The spirit of family business: A comparative analysis of Anglo, Germanic and Nordic nations

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A Thematic Analysis of Cultural Variations in Family Businesses: The CASE Project

“…Thematic analysis indicated that the activities, markets, and lines of business selected by family businesses typically are not similar to those of other families in the community. Even if they are (as when part of a regional cluster), the relationship tends to be more business centric than family centric, as illustrated among Australian firms' natural progression from family centricity to business centricity (Moores & Mula, 2000).…”

Succession Planning in SMEs

“…Most of the research under this stream (Brown and Coverly, 1999;Chrisman et al, 1998;Chung and Yuen, 2003;Floren, 1998;Klein, 2000;Lauterbach et al, 1999;Moores and Mula, 2000;Santiago, 2000;Sharma and Rao, 2000), illustrates the extent and critical nature of succession planning in family-owned businesses worldwide. Moreover, these streams of research demonstrate that various aspects of the 'family' dimension of the business hold the potential to impact long-range planning processes and practices among family firms, suggesting that different criteria and patterns for succession planning might exist within family-owned businesses according to size and other factors.…”