Regional economic performance and the differential prevalence of corporate and family business
Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy
ISSN: 1750-6204
Article publication date: 12 November 2020
Issue publication date: 3 March 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Previous studies have largely examined interregional variations of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) rather than family firm concentrations. This paper aims to address this gap through an analysis of firm type indicators across Europe from the Eurostat database, using social, economic and demographic statistics at the NUTS 2 regional level to ascertain the nature, prevalence and regional contexts of family firm concentrations.
Design/methodology/approach
Hierarchical clustering is performed to map the regional distribution of the European family business.
Findings
Results show that the co-existence of family SMEs with large firms is negatively related to regional economic performance, and this variation has implications for the understanding of the survival and strategic behaviour of family firms.
Originality/value
The study promotes a new family business “in context” than “by context” point of view and paves the way for further empirical work with interregional family business data at various spatial levels.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper forms part of a special section “Family Entrepreneurship in Communities: Social Context and the Creation of Social Value”, guest edited by James Cunningham and Claire Seaman.
The authors acknowledge support from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ES/S004656/1) and the ESPON (European Spatial Planning Observation Network) 2006 Programme (Project 2.1.3).
Citation
Bika, Z. and Rosa, P. (2022), "Regional economic performance and the differential prevalence of corporate and family business", Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 238-259. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEC-11-2019-0116
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited