Downsizing and Stakeholder Orientation Among the Fortune 500: Does Family Ownership Matter?

Eleni Stavrou (), George Kassinis () and Alexis Filotheou

Journal of Business Ethics, 2007, vol. 72, issue 2, 149-162

Abstract: While downsizing has been widely studied, its connection to firm ownership status and the reasons behind it are missing from extant research. We explore the relationship between downsizing and family ownership status among Fortune 500 firms. Weâ\x90£propose that family firms downsize less than non-family firms, irrespective of performance, because their relationship with employees is based on normative commitments rather than financial performance alone. We suggest that their actions are related to employee- and community-friendly policies. We find that family businesses do downsize less irrespective of financial performance considerations. However, their actions are not related to their employee- or community-friendly practices. The results raise issues related to the motivations of large multinationals toâ\x90£downsize and the drivers of their stakeholder management practices. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007

Keywords: downsizing; family business; performance; stakeholder orientation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (76)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10551-006-9162-x (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:jbuset:v:72:y:2007:i:2:p:149-162

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-006-9162-x

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().