'The employees are all equal... but some are more equals than others'. Altruism, opportunism and discrimination in family SMEs
Filippo Ferrari
MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany
Abstract:
This article provides empirical evidence to support the Agency Theory as applied to small and medium-sized family firms. The research, conducted on a sample of SMEs (N = 88), has investigated the main elements of the Agency Theory ( type of contract, agent autonomy, mechanisms of resource distribution, the match between job assignment and worker skills, the overall level of perceived organizational justice), using a qualitative method. The literature suggests that altruism of the Principal as a parent and widespread opportunistic behavior by the Agent are confirmed phenomena typical of family SMEs. In addition, the research highlights the implications in terms of agency costs and perceived organizational justice on the part of employees who are not members of the family
Keywords: Family Business; Agency Theory; Organizational justice; Opportunistic Behavior. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M1 M12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-12-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/52391/1/MPRA_paper_52391.pdf original version (application/pdf)
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:pra:mprapa:52391
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().