The Role of Culture in Family Business
Résumé
While family firms are ubiquitous, their prevalence displays wide spatial differences. Also, their performance ability varies significantly across contexts. A large literature in economics and finance has shown that institutional factors play a key role in explaining variations in the diffusion of family firms and their performance attainment. In this article, I review a young, fast-growing stream of research which focuses on culture as a source of these variations. By discussing existing theories, methods and findings, this article illustrates how focusing on cultural elements such as trust, religion, family values and collectivism provides a useful lens to answer the important questions of why family firms exist and how well they perform.