Family Firm Research: The Need for a Methodological Rethink

Paul Westhead and Marc Cowling

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 1998, vol. 23, issue 1, 31-56

Abstract: The scale of family company activity in the United Kingdom was measured with regard to several family firm definitions. This study confirms that family companies are a numerically important group of businesses. Policy makers and practitioners must, however, be aware that the scale of family firm activity in any developed economy is highly sensitive to the family firm definition selected. Within a bivariate as well as multivariate statistical framework, marked demographic differences were identified between family and non-family companies with regard to several family firm definitions. We suggest that bivariate studies comparing the management practices and performance of family and non-family firms may have identified ‘demographic sample’ differences rather than ‘real’ differences. Implications for future research exploring the management and performance of family and non-family firms are discussed.

Date: 1998
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (97)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/104225879802300102 (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:sae:entthe:v:23:y:1998:i:1:p:31-56

DOI: 10.1177/104225879802300102

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().