Corporate Governance: An International Review – Call for Papers
Special Issue on "Cross-National Perspectives on Ownership and Governance in Family Firms"
Deadline for Paper Submissions: September 16, 2013
Special Issue Guest Editors:
Ruth V. Aguilera, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA; Chi-Nien Chung, National University of Singapore; Sanjay Goel, University of Minnesota Duluth, USA; Gonzalo Jimenez, Universidad Adolfo Ibañez, Chile; Till Talaulicar, University of Erfurt, Germany
Corporate Governance: An International Review (CGIR) invites paper submissions for a special issue on ownership and governance in family firms. Family firms as an ownership form dominate in both emerging and advanced economies and account for approximately 90 percent of all firms worldwide. While they are mostly small in size, family firms are also well represented among medium- and large-sized organizations throughout the world. Family businesses differ from non-family firms particularly with respect to their governance arrangements. In a family-owned business, family members tend to own, control, and directly influence the firm. However, this ownership and involvement of the family can take various forms as these firms may also feature non-family owners, listings on the stock exchange, and top management and board members who do not belong to the family. Therefore, family business research tends to be first and foremost a study of a specific ownership type and governance form.
Ownership and governance in family firms have attracted broad scholarly attention, not just in management, but also in economics, finance, accounting, psychology and sociology. Researchers have applied an ample set of theoretical perspectives – such as agency theory, stewardship theory, and resource based view – to investigate the different types of governance systems, their determinants and their implications on a variety of stakeholders like family, outside minority investors, non-family managers, employees, creditors or society at large. Extant literature suggests that the distinctive and heterogeneous features of a family business also imply that governance in a family firm can potentially be a value-destroying resource (i.e., family ownership leading to loss of decision-making efficiency and financial performance) or a value-creating resource (i.e., family firms´ socio-emotional wealth remediating some of the agency problems of widely-held nonfamily firms and strengthening firm control). Despite the relevance of these core family business topics, many of the critical antecedents, precise mechanisms and key implications of family governance and ownership still remain ambiguous.
We thus encourage scholars to apply a wide variety of rigorous methodological approaches in order to shed further light on the following family business research areas that are of particular interest to advance the field of family firm governance throughout the global economy:
- How do characteristics of family ownership structure explain the prevalence, practices and performance of family firms? How are, and how should, these peculiarities be reflected in regulatory policies and codes of corporate governance?
- How does the governance of family firms vary across countries and industries? How does the institutional environment affect the prevalence of family firms in different countries and sectors?
- What new theoretical perspectives can overcome the limitations of current research and contribute to better explaining family firm governance? How can, for instance, insights from the fields of family studies and family therapy be deployed in research on family business governance?
- What are the roles and effects of formal vs. informal processes, structures and systems in family firm governance?
- What are the social-psychological factors and/or dynamics that explain peculiarities of family firm governance, and what effects these may have on value delivered to various stakeholders?
- How do different ownership theories help us better understand the dimensions and dynamics of ownership in family firms?
- Why are families sometimes willing to share ownership with outsiders, and how are those contracts designed? How do more heterogeneous ownership structures and public listings influence the dynamics of family firm governance?
- What explains the exclusion or inclusion of family members in owning and governing the firm?
This list of topics is suggestive rather than exhaustive. We are open to a wide range of approaches from different disciplinary backgrounds (e.g., finance, management, economics, psychology, or sociology). It is the tradition of CGIR to welcome a wide variety of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. Both theoretical and empirical work will be considered. In accordance with CGIR's values, we seek research that is both rigorously done and relevant to practitioners and/or policy-makers. Since the overarching mission of the journal is to develop a global theory of corporate governance, multi-country examinations of family ownership are particularly welcome. Both national and international topics are appropriate for consideration, but priority is given to research which spans multiple governance environments.
Submissions must be made via the CGIR website (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cgir) and should indicate that the manuscript is intended for this special issue. Contributors should follow the CGIR Author Guidelines (which can be found at www.cgir.org). The deadline for complete manuscript submissions is September 16, 2013. Papers will be subject to the CGIR standard double-blind reviewing process. Authors who are invited to revise their submission to the special issue are also invited to present their revised paper at a paper development workshop. It is anticipated that papers accepted for this special issue will be published in 2014.
For additional queries about this special issue, please feel free to contact the guest editors which include: Ruth Aguilera (ruth-agu@illinois.edu), Sanjay Goel (sgoel@d.umn.edu), Chi-Nien Chung (bizccn@nus.edu.sg), Gonzalo Jimenez (gjimenez@proteus.cl), and Till Talaulicar (till.talaulicar@uni-erfurt.de).
Prof. Dr. Till Talaulicar
Chair of Organization and Management
University of Erfurt
Nordhäuser Str. 63
D-99089 Erfurt
Phone: +49-(0)361 737-4511, -4510
Fax: +49-(0)361 737-4519
E-Mail: till.talaulicar@uni-erfurt.de
Internet: http://www.uni-erfurt.de/organisationstheorie
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