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This article seeks to explore success factors for integrating non‐family chief financial officers (CFOs) in family firms. The integration of non‐family CFOs is of great importance to family firms, as the CFO position is often the first management position in family firms for which non‐family managers are recruited. Moreover, non‐family CFOs can bring in valuable know‐how to the family firm and reduce the family firm's financial risk.

The findings of this study are based on a qualitative field study in Austrian family firms. The views of non‐family CFOs, family managers, family board members, and non‐family CEOs were obtained through semi‐structured interviews.

Four larger success factors for non‐family CFOs and five for controlling families were derived. The most important factor for non‐family CFOs that emerged from the study was that CFOs should be appreciative of the peculiarities of family firms. For controlling families, the results suggest that it is advisable to provide the non‐family CFO enough space to effectively conduct their job as well as respect the CFO's views.

Both non‐family CFOs and controlling families may find the results presented in this article useful for creating a successful integration of non‐family CFOs in family firms. The success factors presented should be directly applicable for CFOs and controlling families.

This study is the first to investigate success factors for the integration of non‐family CFOs into family firms. Moreover, the results of this article may also be useful to the under‐researched field of non‐family managers in family firms in general.

The purpose of this paper is to examine motives for hiring a non‐family Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in family firms. The authors explore the perceptions of family firm owners towards external managers by analyzing how their goals relate to the employment of a non‐family CFO.

This study is based on a survey of 195 small‐ and medium‐sized privately‐held German family firms. It investigates the relationship between goals of the family and the employment of a non‐family CFO.

Family firm owners decide against an external CFO when their goal of independence and control is high. Furthermore, they do not seem to trust external managers to act in accordance with their goal of enterprise value growth. However, they seem to realize that non‐family CFOs are likely to decrease financial risk through the provision of additional capabilities.

The findings are relevant to understand the relationship between external managers and family firm owners. By employing a non‐family CFO, family firm owners give away part of the control, but they can also gain additional valuable input and potentially lower their financial risk. They should however put effort into setting up appropriate incentive structures for the manager.

This chapter explores how stress may manifest among non-family member employees, family member employees, and family firm founders in family firms during the startup phases of the organization. Understanding how stress arises in family firm startups has received limited attention to date. Notably absent in the research is the understanding of how stress arises in non-family member employees, which is important to understand as non-family member employees often outnumber family member employees. As stress increases for the non-family member employee due to issues such as role ambiguity and conflict, negative outcomes resultant from this stress may increase the chances of the employee exhibiting withdrawal behaviors. It is suggested these outcomes increase the stress of the family firm entrepreneur and family members by increasing interrole and interpersonal conflicts and negatively impacting decision-making. These effects on the family members may adversely impact the family firm’s chances of performing well, thus decreasing its chances for survival. Recommendations for future research are also made.

While the relationship between non-family CEOs and corporate innovation in China has been widely studied, the results remain inconclusive. This study explores the relationship between non-family CEOs and corporate innovation in the context of intergenerational succession. It considers the background and background characteristics of non-family CEOs in an attempt to provide a theoretical foundation for human resource management and innovative strategic management that can be applied in the transformation of family companies.

The authors develop, then test, a series of hypotheses using an econometric analysis of a large sample of Chinese listed family firms. To control for endogeneity problems, such as missing variables in the model and the selectivity bias of the sample, propensity score matching (PSM) model is applied to analyze the panel data of 452 listed family firms from 2009–2019.

This study first validates the mechanism by which non-family CEO background characteristics affect innovation performance in family firms. It then reveals the varying moderating effects of two stages of intergenerational succession (i.e. later-generation participation in management and later-generation take-over management) that influence the relationship between non-family CEOs and corporate innovation.

The study's findings based on upper echelon and imprinting theory complement and extend existing research by revealing the impact of non-family CEOs from different backgrounds, and also identifying the role of intergenerational succession in the relationship between non-family CEO background characteristics and innovation performance.

By combining structural contingency theory and socio-emotional wealth (SEW) theory, this study aims to identify the organizational determinants of collective performance-related pay (PRP) adoption by examining the interplay between a firm's ownership characteristics (i.e. family or non-family ownership) and other organizational characteristics.

This study adopts a quantitative approach, conducting empirical analyses of a longitudinal dataset of 4,222 Italian companies in the manufacturing sector for 2009–2017. The probability of adopting collective PRP schemes is estimated using the average marginal effects of the probit and linear probability models (LPMs).

The results show that family firms are less likely to adopt collective PRP schemes than non-family firms. Moreover, ceteris paribus, firm characteristics such as size, age and past (firm and labor) productivity are important determinants of firms' adoption of collective incentive pay; however, the significance and magnitude of their effects vary depending on a firm's ownership structure.

This analysis has two major elements of novelty. First, it increases the knowledge of how organizational contingencies differ in family versus non-family contexts regarding pay decisions. Second, it brings new theoretical perspectives to the pay debate by combining structural contingency theory and SEW theory, thus developing new and fertile theoretical grounds for advancing our understanding of the pay determinants. To the best of authors' knowledge, this is one of the first (if any) studies to shed light on collective PRP in family and non-family firms.

This study aims to examine how differences in the strength of interpersonal ties affect the social structure of organisational family and non-family relationships and their implications for work-related interactions.

This study used a quantitative approach. The hypotheses were tested using multi-group analysis in PLS-SEM as implemented in WarpPLS Version.

The results show that both family and non-family organisational members are inclined to ask from others whom they previously have given information, implying that reciprocity in work-related interactions in the workplace is present at the dyad level. Furthermore, the existing robust strength of ties among family employees facilitate a three-way relationship where each member is responsible for the quality of work-related interactions between other members. This means that triadic communication is only present within family networks. While, the absence of strong interpersonal ties within non-family network fuels the popularity effect, where non-family employees who are perceived to be knowledgeable tend to be approached by others for work-related information.

This study brings to the fore a nuanced perspective that complements our current understanding of the implications of social relationships within family and non-family employee groups on work-related interactions in the workplace. It provides clues on how family and non-family employees identify with the firm through their informal relational embeddedness towards work-related interactions within the organisation.

This study aims to use the gender socialization theory, critical mass theory and legitimacy theory to examine the female gender and environmental disclosure of family and non-family-controlled firms in India.

A sample size of 783 and 177 firm-year observations for family and non-family-controlled firms, respectively, between 2009 and 2020 uses descriptive statistics, a test of difference in means and panel regression with random effect assumptions for data interpretation.

The descriptive statistics show a significant mean difference between family-controlled firms and non-family-controlled firms in India. The first findings show that female chief executive officers (CEOs) and CEO duality have a positive and statistically significant association with environmental disclosure in a family-controlled firm but not in non-family-controlled firms in India. The second findings show that independent female directors have no significant association with environmental disclosure of family and non-family firms in India. The fourth findings with critical mass theory confirm the insignificant association of female directors on environmental disclosure of family and non-family firms in India. The results are robust to controlling firm-level variables.

Firms in the Indian context, through this study, assure stakeholders that family firms are better at improving stakeholder’s expectation of environmental accountability than non-family firms, especially where female CEOs are in charge.

This study adds the family perspective of the relationship between female CEOs and the environmental disclosure of listed firms in India. Also, female CEO duality and environmental disclosure add novelty to the research studies on gender and environmental disclosure.

Our paper seeks to further understand how family involvement in management influences firm growth.

Using a sample of small high-tech firms, we classify three different types of firms: family firms managed by family-CEOs, family firms managed by non-family CEOs and non-family firms.

Consistent with our expectations, we show that firms managed by family-CEOs have less firm growth in comparison with the other two groups. When the family firm is managed by non-family CEOs, the presence of another family member in management positions has a negative impact on firm growth. Finally, we found that founder-led family firms have better firm growth than descendant-led family firms.

Implications for the theory of family firms are discussed.

The value of the present study is to analyse in depth the heterogeneity of the family business trying to close the gap by exploring the effect of family involvement on small firm growth. Thus, we will find different behaviours of these family companies, depending on the family member’s presence in management positions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore differences between non-family employees of family and non-family firms regarding the perceptions of organizational justice and levels of organizational commitment. Moreover, focusing on non-family employees of family firms, the study assesses the relation between the perceptions of organizational justice and levels of organizational commitment. Finally, the study seeks to understand which dimension of organizational commitment (i.e. affective, continuance, or normative) is more associated with the perceptions of organizational justice of non-family employees working in family firms.

The empirical evidence is provided by a sample of 205 Portuguese employees, 98 non-family employees of family firms, and 107 non-family firms' employees, who responded to a questionnaire that included organizational justice and commitment measures. All firms included in the sample are small-sized privately owned companies.

Results show that there are no differences between non-family employees of family and non-family firms regarding the perceptions of organizational justice. However, results reveal that there are significant differences regarding the levels of organizational commitment. Furthermore, it was found that, in family firms, non-family employees' perceptions of organizational justice are positively related to the levels of commitment, especially regarding the affective dimension.

This paper aims to contribute to the literature by addressing two classical organizational aspects, which are yet under-researched in the comparison between family and non-family firms, while pursuing to shed some light on the relationship between the perceptions of organizational justice and levels of organizational commitment of non-family employees working in family firms.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse 100 of the largest family firms and their personnel costs and employee numbers compared to non-family firms in the Czech Republic and confirm if there exist differences between personnel costs for family and non-family firms.

The sample consisted of 100 family firms and 97 non-family firms from the Czech Republic for the comparison. Four hypotheses about relation between personnel costs for family and non-family firms and their governing body were set. Descriptive statistics were calculated, and t-tests and Kruskal–Wallis test for confirmation of set hypothesis were used.

Sales volume and production consumption results are used as variables, which were compared between family and non-family firms to achieve the most relevant possible conclusions. Based on our results, it can be stated that differences between personnel costs, which, in this study, comprise employee wages, are not statistically significant in the largest Czech family firms. There are significant differences in personnel costs for company boards. In comparing employee numbers and the number of members of statutory bodies, however, no significant difference was ascertained.

This study responds to a gap in the literature, by exploring the differences between personnel costs (for employees and governing body) in the area of the Czech Republic. This study also contributes to the understanding of the remuneration within family firms, by assessing the role of executive remuneration in family firms.