The purpose of this paper is to investigate, in a multi‐country context, the inclusion of family‐member managers and non‐family‐member managers in family businesses, and the relationship of this variable to certain management activities, styles and characteristics.
This four‐country study involved survey research and correlational testing of nine hypotheses. The four countries, Croatia, France, India and the USA, provided a mixture of entrepreneurial contexts. Given limited prior research in this area, this study is exploratory and broadly focused.
There was limited support for the relationship between the percentage of non‐family‐member managers and the nine management activities, styles and characteristics studied, both between and within countries. The strongest support was for the positive relationship between the percentage of non‐family managers and the use of sophisticated financial management methods.
Inherent in the choice of countries are some variations among the four country samples. Future research can build on these findings with more focused studies in areas that seem worthy of further analysis.
This study, along with further research, should allow family business owner/managers to better understand the possible impacts of bringing non‐family managers into their firms. Family businesses may not need to be concerned that their firms will lose their “familiness” if they hire non‐family managers.
This study begins to fill a gap in the family business literature identified by prior researchers and, as noted above, creates a base for future research and for possible practical implications for family firm practitioners.
