Family Involvement and Sustainable Family Business: Analysing Their Effects on Diversification Strategies

Ines Herrero
Additional contact information
Ines Herrero: Business Management and Marketing, University Pablo de Olavide, Ctra. de Utrera Km. 1. Dep, 41013 Sevilla, Spain

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 11, 1-20

Abstract: Recent studies have noted that traditional agency theory and risk attitudes differ when firms are small and have a family character. In this work, we provide new insights with respect to the effect that the family role and the different types of risk exert on diversification strategies. We provide a different view on the effect that the number of generations and having a family manager exert on diversification attitudes and we analyse the concept of family involvement for small family firms and the moderating role it has in the relationship between the different types of risk and diversification decisions. By using a behavioural model analysis and a set of fishing firms to test our hypotheses, our results corroborate the importance of family variables on the behaviour of small family firms and how these firms avoid risk under certain stable conditions while take riskier decisions when sustainability and survivability is menaced by unstable environments. We not only provide theoretical reasons that help to the understanding of diversification decisions of small family firms but we also draw some specific conclusions that will help fishery managers to achieve more sustainable fisheries by a better understanding of fishers behaviours.

Keywords: risk; diversification; family involvement; family firms; fisheries; fisher behaviour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/11/2099/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/11/2099/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:11:p:2099-:d:118995

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().