Dancing with giants: Contextualizing state and family ownership effects on firm performance in the Gulf Cooperation Council

Irma Martínez-García, Rodrigo Basco and Silvia Gómez-Ansón
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Silvia Gómez Ansón

Journal of Family Business Strategy, 2021, vol. 12, issue 4

Abstract: While principal–principal problems are prevalent in emerging economies, the severity of these problems could vary based on the identity of shareholders and the institutional context. This study theoretically and empirically analyzes the effect of state and family blockholders as well as their possible interaction on financial firm performance in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Using a dataset of 389 non-financial firms and 2607 observations (2009–2015), we found that ownership held by the state as the largest shareholder has a negative effect on firm performance, whereas this negative effect disappears when the state owns between 15 % and 50 % of shares and coexists with local families as other large shareholders. Our findings contribute to the nexus between the family business and corporate governance literature by studying principal–principal agency problems and the impact of owner combinations on firm performance in emerging economies in the GCC region.

Keywords: State ownership; Family ownership; Agency theory; Emerging economies; Gulf Cooperation Council countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877858520301005
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:fambus:v:12:y:2021:i:4:s1877858520301005

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/719791/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 719791/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.jfbs.2020.100373

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Family Business Strategy is currently edited by J.H. Astrachan

More articles in Journal of Family Business Strategy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().