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The importance of formal human resource (HR) practices is widely recognized in management literature, but under-researched in the small business and family firm domain. Previous research indicates that family firms rely more on informal HR practices, based on social networks. However, given the heterogeneity of family firms, one cannot assume that all family firms are reluctant to formalize their HR. As the CEO is the key decision maker who covers HR management in family firms, the effect of the CEO type on formal HR practices will be studied. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Based on a large-scale survey, resulting in a response of 532 family SMEs, the authors perform a hierarchical regression analysis studying the effect of a family/nonfamily CEO on the use of formal HR practices, introducing several moderating effects: CEO generational stage, tenure and education.

Results indicate that family firms with a family CEO have more formal HR practices than those managed by a nonfamily CEO due to higher levels of goal alignment and intentional trust between the owning family and family CEO. Moreover, family firms managed by first generation family CEOs and family CEOs with a higher education have more formal HR practices.

The findings suggest that family CEOs can be equally or even more able as nonfamily CEOs to run a family firm in a formalized/professionalized manner.

Given the scant amount of research on HR formalization in family firms, even though literature documents performance increasing effects, this study fulfils the need to study the effect of the CEO on HR formalization.

This article examines the literature related to the marginalization of social studies through the lens of elementary social studies teacher education. This study presents the case of two different states wherein one state, Virginia, tests social studies in elementary schools and another state, North Carolina, where social studies is not tested until middle school. The data gathered from both states were originally analyzed to shed light on the question of testing's effect on teacher preparation and subsequent curriculum enactment. Data collected from the study suggest that factors such as field experiences, programs of study, and methods instruction impact teacher education in elementary social studies in more important ways than student testing.

This study looks at SME spending on training in Northern Ireland. We include a range of human resource management functions, as well as workforce characteristics, the external environment, size, and the impact of changes in ownership status as important determinants of training expenditure in SMEs. Particular attention is also paid to the importance of whether the enterprise is family owned and/or managed. Generally, our results show that HR functions do generally matter; however, workforce characteristics (other than shift working), ownership characteristics and external factors, and even to some extent size, were much less important than expected. What our results do show is that whether the firm is family‐owned/managed is a major factor in determining training budgets in SMEs in Northern Ireland.

A central goal of strategic management is to understand why some organizations outperform others. Based on the literature, we test the links among strategic resources, firm’s strategic orientation, and performance using data from 1,201 Spanish small and medium‐sized enterprises. The results can guide managers to invest in the appropriate resources since there is evidence that technology, innovation, quality, and human resource management leads to better company performance. It is also shown how strategic resources varies according to strategic orientation.

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.

By investigating the use of formal compensation practices in family small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the purpose of this paper is to provide important new insights in these issues for academics, as well as family business practitioners, prospective applicants and financiers of family businesses. Moreover, this study includes a contingency that allows to explore heterogeneity across family businesses in their use of formal compensation practices: the CEO type.

A survey of 124 small- and medium-sized Belgian family businesses to explore the use of formal compensation practices is analyzed by the author.

The results support the hypothesis that family firms with a family CEO adopt significantly less formal compensation practices than their counterparts that are led by a non-family CEO.

Generalizing the findings of this study must be taken with care, as the findings are based on a cross-sectional sample of family SMEs in one country, Belgium. Future research can build on these findings with studies on larger samples in other countries.

This study may be interesting for family business practitioners and consultants, as it provides insight in the actual use of formal compensation practices that are recommended as a best practice in numerous practitioner handbooks. Also, the results of this study might be important for prospective applicants and financiers, since the compensation system is an important communication device to signal legitimacy to external stakeholders.

Compensation issues are among the main challenges SMEs, especially family firms, face. Despite the clear importance of this matter, academic interest has been rather limited. This paper therefore displays sound descriptive survey results and empirically investigates the determinants of the use of formal compensation practices in Belgian family SMEs by distinguishing between different types of family businesses.

Our study aims to explore the ownership structure and accounting conservatism in influencing the value relevance that we analyse through the paradigm of open innovation and socio-emotional wealth (SEW). We also extended the test to identify how firm size could affect value relevance.

Through panel data testing, we collected all issuers on the stock exchange for the 2016–2018 period. The total collected observations are 735 observations from various industries.

The results of the study provide empirical evidence that institutional ownership is more pronounce, especially in companies with high asset levels. We also conducted other tests to see it from the perspective of SEW. We divide companies into family and non-family companies. The results of this study indicate that institutional ownership has an effect on increasing value relevance, especially in family companies compared with non-family companies. The results of the study also indicate that accounting conservatism plays a more important role in increasing value relevance in non-family firms compared to family firms.

This study advances in two main ways. First, we use a SEW approach and an open innovation perspective. Second, we conducted tests for family and non-family firms.

Family firms account for around 75 per cent of all business enterprises in the UK, but there is a lack of research on these businesses. The family firms literature recognises that there are differences between family and non‐family businesses; differences that can be explained by conflicts between a juxtaposition of family values and business values. Consequently, family firms tend to have different approaches to ownership and control, the composition of boards, employment practices, strategy formulation and succession management. This paper reports on the demographic characteristics, ownership configurations, boardroom arrangements, managerial and succession practices of a random selection of 1,065 family firms located in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Results reveal that the firms are well‐established, privately owned, small businesses in which the lead family retains almost all shares and dominates the board of directors. These firms give some preferential treatment to family members in employment and managerial matters but business objectives are not ignored. In keeping with previous research, succession matters are not regularly discussed and much more needs to be done to allow for a smooth transition from one family generation to another. The authors conclude by arguing that there is an urgent need for policy makers to address the problems and needs of small family firms and to develop frameworks and practices for assisting these businesses.

The ideas and evidence presented here are part of a piece of research commissioned by ESRC at UMIST on Management and Organisation of Secondary Schools (MOSS). A research team of nine included six serving teachers seconded from their authorities for twelve months. The main fieldwork phase was in 1986 and 1987. Methods included semi‐structured interviews and extensive observations. Aspects of the work have already been reported (e.g. Torrington, Weightman and Johns, 1987; Torrington & Weightman, 1989b; Reid, 1988; Adams, 1988). A full account of the research findings is in Torrington and Weightman, 1989a).

Export information acquisition has mostly been examined disparately as researchers have tended to focus on certain modes of information acquisition independently of others. Furthermore, past studies have typically employed single‐item measures to operationalize information acquisition. The present study attempts to redress these deficiencies by considering a comprehensive set of export information acquisition modes and by developing psychometrically sound measures for each. The results show the adequacy of considering three broad export information acquisition modes (export marketing research, export assistance, and export market intelligence), each of which is operationalized by means of a multi‐item scale. The latter are shown to be reliable and to possess content, convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity.