家族企业企业文化外文参考文献及翻译 第4页
Why Founders Matter
The goal of Amit and Villalonga's project was to ask whether they perform better for shareholders. That said, family firms seem to outperform their non-family counterparts for two reasons. Many non-family companies suffer from the standard conflict between management and shareholders over such issues as returns, management pay and governance. "This conflict between owner and manager is standard in widely-held firms" says Amit. "In a family-run company, the manager and owner are the same and so the conflict doesn't exist."
Family firms do carry the baggage of tensions between majority and minority shareholders; however, stockholders are still better off because there is a higher cost to the shareholder-owner conflict compared to squabbles between minority and majority shareholders. Although those conflicts may help or harm results, the real reason family companies seem to work is their link to founders. "We don't go into the effects of founders specifically, but there is an effect," says Amit. "Founders instill commitment into the entire employee base. That makes the company better. Non-family companies don't have that."
Such reasoning is why struggling companies often bring back their founders to right the ship. Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997 as interim and later permanent CEO, and turned the company around with new products such as the iMac and iPod. PeopleSoft ousted CEO Craig Conway Oct. 1 and brought back founder David Duff. Charles Schwab's founder and chairman stepped back in as CEO in July after the company announced a 10% drop in earnings for the quarter.
Amit's and Villalong's findings illustrate the founder effect. According to this research, firms with a founder-CEO at the helm have the best mean ratio 原文请找腾讯752018766辣.文"论'文.网
http://www.751com.cn to break when descendents enter the picture. When the founder is succeeded by a descendent as chairman, Tobin's q drops by a full point to 1.81. The ratio of market value to assets drops further when the CEO is also a descendent.
The lesson: Family run companies need to have the founders involved to succeed. "Our results confirm that founders bring valuable skills to their firms," write Amit and Villalonga. "However, when we look at the chairman's position as well as the CEO's, we find that founders' skills are almost as valuable when they bring them to the firm through their position as chairman but have a hired CEO in place. One likely explanation for this is the nature of the skills that founders bring to their firms: Founders may be inspiring leaders, great visionaries, or exceptionally talented scientists. But they may not-and need not-be good managers as well."
The Corporate Family Tree
Despite the definition of 'family firm' offered earlier, it isn't always clear what constitutes a family-run company. There are companies such as Hewlett-Packard, founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard, whose families now control large blocks of shares in H-P. The Packard family owns twice as many shares as the Hewlett family and is deemed the controlling family by Amit and Villalonga. Cereal maker Kellogg Company is controlled by the W.G. Kellogg foundation. Fashion retailer Nordstrom is another family-run firm.
But other situations aren't as obvious. Time Warner became a family firm in 1996 as the result of the acquisition of Turner Broadcasting System, whose founder, Ted Turner, became the largest shareholder in the merged entity. The Ochs-Sulzberger and Graham families took over the New York Times Co. and Washington Post Co., respectively, by acquiring bankrupt companies. Amit aggregated family ownership across all family members and representatives as well as share held in trusts.
Once family ownership is established, firms fall into the following broad categories:
Family firms with controlling mechanisms and a family CEO. In these companies, families control the company through mechanisms such as super-voting shares, which may not trade publicly and give the family a certain number of shares of voting power for every share they own.
Family firms with controlling mechanisms but no family CEO. These firms have a structure that keeps family voting power, but hire outsiders to run the company. Ford hired Jacques Nasser as CEO in the 1990s, for example, before handing the reins back to a Ford descendent.
Family firms with a family CEO but no control-enhancing mechanisms.
In all those cases, whether the founder is involved in the company seems to be the biggest differentiator behind its success.上一页 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] 下一页
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