The Growth Behavior of Family Firms : Theoretical and Empirical Elaborations

Annika Geyer aims to advance the current understanding of variations in family businesses'growth performance and to explain their potential origins. She focuses on the respective impact of the set of relevant background factors (stemming from top executives'individual characteristics as well as the given organizational and social environment) on the firms growth performance and the underlying processes through which this impact is transmitted. The insights of this work constitute an essential step towards settling the debate on how the family actually contributes to the family firm's performance and hold some important implications for practitioners.