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Do families shape corporate governance structures?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

María Sacristán Navarro  and
Silvia Gómez Ansón
María Sacristán Navarro
Affiliation:
Department of Business Administration, Rey Juan Carlos University, Madrid, Spain
Silvia Gómez Ansón
Affiliation:
Department of Business Administration, University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain
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Abstract

This paper provides empirical evidence of family firm corporate governance structures, by examining a set of corporate governance characteristics of 132 non-financial Spanish listed firms. Results show that family firm boards present differential characteristics and that different patterns of family ownership configurations do not affect family firm corporate governance structures. We find that Spanish family firm boards are smaller than those in non-family firms. Family firm directors own a larger fraction of firm shares and have longer Chairman tenure than non-family firms, and family firms use fewer voluntary board committees – such as nomination and remuneration committees and executive committees. Besides, family firm boards and committees are biased towards insiders. Whether these differential characteristics affect other minority non-family shareholders negatively remains an open question.

Keywords

family firmscorporate governanceboard compositionboard committees
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Management & Organization , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , July 2009 , pp. 327 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2009

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