ABSTRACT
The role played by large family owners and minority shareholders in inuencing rm strategic decisions has been widely analyzed in the management literature (e.g., Block 2010, 2012; Chrisman and Patel 2012; Deephouse and Jaskiewicz 2013; Feldman et al. 2014; Gómez-Mejía et al. 2010, 2014; Grossman and Hart 1986; Miller et al. 2010; Muñoz-Bullon and Sanchez-Bueno 2011; Patel and Chrisman 2014; Shleifer and Vishny 1986). According to the growing body of research exploring the interplay between family and non-family shareholders, family owners are prone to make strategic decisions that follow their own subjective rules-triggered by their own risk preferencerather than make choices based on objective nancial criteria which presumably would be more benecial to non-family shareholders (Anderson et al. 2012; Chua et al. 2015). Given this conict of interests between family and non-family shareholders, powerful family owners may develop an “us-against-them” mentality (Kellermanns et al. 2012) that leads them to use their control and inuence over the business to alter rm strategic decision-making in ways that advance their family interests. That is, family owners purportedly obtain private benets from the rm at the expense of other rm stakeholders (Berkman et al. 2009; Fan and Wong 2002; Grossman and Hart 1986). In fact, family owners’ prioritization of family goals is likely to inuence the future of the rm since it aects the allocation of internal resources, the relationship with non-family stakeholders, as well as the work environment (Hitt et al. 2009). For instance, senior executives of family rms may allocate considerable levels of resources and capabilities to achieve family goals, which may have negative consequences for rm performance (Shleifer and Vishny 1986).
