Towards a better understanding of family business groups from a cross-cultural perspective

Abstract

Around the world, some of the largest firms in many countries are controlled by family business groups such as Fiat in Italy, Ford in the US, Hutchison Whampoa in Hong Kong, Samsung in South Korea and many others. Further, many family groups have a long history. Although family business groups are a significant and long standing phenomenon in most parts of the world, their resilience to globalization in their use of different governance structures and relational capabilities have received little attention from a cross-cultural perspective. Drawing on our previous work, the study provides a theoretical framework to classify family business groups’ key traits on the basis of their etic/emic distinction from a cross-cultural perspective