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All in the family? CEO choice and firm organization

Author

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  • Renata Lemos
  • Daniela Scur

Abstract

Family firms are the most prevalent firm type in the world, particularly in emerging economies. Dynastic family firms tend to have lower productivity, though what explains their underperformance is still an open question. We collect new data on CEO successions for over 800 firms in Latin America and Europe to document their corporate governance choices and, crucially, provide causal evidence on the effect of dynastic CEO successions on the adoption of managerial best practices tied to improved productivity. specifically, we establish two key results. First, there is a preference for male heirs: when the founding CEO steps down they are 30pp more likely to keep control within the family when they have a son. Second, instrumenting with the gender of the founder's children, we estimate dynastic CEO successions lead to 0.8 standard deviations lower adoption of managerial best practices, suggesting an implied productivity decrease of 5 to 10%. To guide our discussion on mechanisms, we build a model with two types of CEOs (family and professional) who decide whether to invest in better management practices. Family CEOs cannot credibly commit to firing employees without incurring reputation costs. This induces lower worker effort and reduces the returns to investing in better management. We find empirical evidence that, controlling for lower skill levels of managers, reputational costs constrain investment in better management.

Suggested Citation

  • Renata Lemos & Daniela Scur, 2018. "All in the family? CEO choice and firm organization," CEP Discussion Papers dp1528, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    • Handle: RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1528
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    Cited by:

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    3. Yeh, Yin-Hua & Liao, Chen-Chieh, 2021. "Are non-family successors all the same? Inside-promoted vs. outside-sourced," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    4. Ashutosh Thakur & Jonathan Bendor, 2021. "Endogenous Organizational Restructuring: Status, Productivity, & Meritocratic Dynamics," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 084, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    5. Jenny Kragl & Alberto Palermo & Guoqian Xi & Joern Block, 2023. "Hiring family or non-family managers when non-economic (sustainability) goals matter? A multitask agency model," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 675-700, August.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    CEO; family firms; organisation; emerging economies;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M11 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Production Management
    • L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior

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