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The purpose of this paper is to empirically compare values and beliefs of family‐business members with those of professional managers across two countries.

The methodological approach utilizes a survey comparing 163 family‐firm members and 168 bank managers in Ukraine and the USA, looking for differences between the culture of members of family‐owned firms and non‐family professionals; and especially the direction of any differences.

The findings show significant differences between family‐firm members and non‐family professionals in both countries. Differences are in the same direction for three constructs. While this study is limited in only examining two countries, the results imply a conclusion that higher social flexibility and spirituality and lower power distance are potentially universal in terms of family‐firm culture.

This study's value is in illuminating specific fundamental cultural traits that may be related to family‐firm competitive advantage that researchers have noted in the literature.

This research furthers our understanding of the interaction between the fields of entrepreneurship and family business. It presents a framework that introduces the family dynamic to Timmons’ driving forces model of entrepreneurship. The framework highlights the influence of the family in the entrepreneurship process and the importance of the fit among the three driving forces and the family. It highlights the importance of, and the pivotal roles played by, outside boards of directors when entrepreneurial activities are undertaken by family businesses. Using extracts from interviews with family and non‐family executives and board members, the research employs a single case study that describes an actual series of events to provide a practical application of the theory.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature concerning the negative effects of conflict among family businesses and to make practitioner focussed recommendations for the prevention, management, and resolution of conflict. This paper discusses the prevalence of conflict in family firms, differentiates the types of conflict present, and recommends proven approaches to prevent and manage the conflict, with a focus on corporate governance tools. Examples of well known companies are presented.

A review was conducted of the literature concerning family business conflict and corporate governance.

Conflict is a common problem in family firms that has significant consequences for the business and the family. Research has shown effective governance may reduce and manage conflict.

This was a literature review. As such it did not perform original research.

This paper has practical implications for family business practitioners. The paper offers the negative aspects of conflict and recommends effective mechanisms such as governance tools to enable the prevention, management, and resolution of conflict.

Implications exist for practitioners and policy makers in order to reduce conflict and increase the viability of family firms.

The scholarly literature has been reviewed and synthesized into distillation for family business owners.

A successful five-generation family business group in India separates its ownership role from its operational management role to meet the needs of a more global economy. This includes hiring professional nonfamily business unit managers as well as including nonfamily directors on the corporate board.

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.

In the literature of family business, certain management activities, styles and characteristics have been most frequently examined. Yet no prior research focusing on the relationship between these family businesses variables has been found. This is a survey‐research correlation study of 149 family businesses. Of the twelve variables studied, twenty of the sixty‐six correlations were found to be significant. Major findings are the consistent use of professional management activities, styles and characteristics in family businesses, and that using non‐family members within top management does not significantly increase the professionalism of management of such businesses.

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 the present paper is to investigate whether the transition from a family business to a non‐family business affects the institutionalisation of management accounting.

This paper is based on an online survey among all large and medium‐sized Austrian firms. Univariate and multivariate statistical analyses were used to test the impact of the level of family influence on aspects of the institutionalisation of management accounting. Firm size is included as the main control variable.

A lower level of influence from the controlling family was found to be correlated with the institutionalisation and intensification of management accounting in medium‐sized firms. For large firms, such a linear relationship could not be drawn. The level of education of management accountants was inversely correlated with the level of family influence in both large and medium‐sized firms.

Further research into the reasons, underlying drivers and inter‐organisational promoters of management accounting change in family businesses is needed. Furthermore, the organisational impacts of the transition from family businesses to non‐family businesses deserve further investigation.

A framework for assessing the organisational effects of the transition from family businesses to non‐family businesses is provided. The empirical results on the impact of the transition on the institutionalisation of management accounting are presented. The level of family influence was found to act as a significant contextual factor for the organisation of management accounting in medium‐sized firms.

The aim of the present study is to test the main differences between private small/medium‐sized family businesses and non‐family businesses with regard to management variables such as: strategy, strategic planning, manager's training and professionalism and financial techniques implementation.

In this empirical research, we use a sample of 639 small and medium‐sized industrial firms, distributed in 456 family and 183 non‐family firms, with the intention of determining whether family SMEs possess specific structural characteristics distinct from non‐family ones. The data collection technique used was a questionnaire obtained from a postal survey, and addressed to the manager of the company.

Results show that managers of family firms use some management tools such as management accounting systems and cash budgets for the decision making process and also give less importance to strategic planning and personnel training programmes as a competitiveness factor.

There is a need for additional research because the findings indicate that there are different managerial behaviours between family and non‐family firms, but we need to corroborate and look for the basis of such differences, in order to address what the advantages and disadvantages of family firms are.

The results lead us to support the need for family firms to focus on “management development”, which should be understood as the general enhancement and growth of management skills through a learning process.

The paper contributes with new empirical evidence about the management function in family businesses. It is also expected that the results of the study help policy makers to make further efforts facilitating the progress of family firms, knowing they are the real engine driving and contributing to welfare of developed economies.

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.