Toward a theory of agency and altruism in family firms

Michael Lubatkin, William S. Schulze and N Dino Richard
Additional contact information
Michael Lubatkin: EM - EMLyon Business School

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Surprisingly, the majority of U.S. family firms offer employed family members short- and long-term performance-based incentive pay. We draw on the household economics and altruism literatures to explain why family firms might feel compelled to do so and develop theory that predicts when this practice will be beneficial. Results based on data obtained from 883 family firms show that altruism, as reflected by the parents' estate and share transfer intentions, moderates the effect of these pay incentives as our theory predicts. As such, this article helps explain both how altruism influences agency relationships in family firms and why business practice in family firms differs from those found in other types of firms.

Date: 2003-07-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (97)

Published in Journal of business venturing, 2003, 18 (4), pp.473-490 P

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02311679

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().