We develop an institutional explanation for the finding that the competitive advantage publicly listed family firms (PFFs) enjoy over other publicly listed firms varies across emerging markets. We propose that PFF performance is contingent on the state of four types of institutions—formal constraining, informal constraining, formal enabling, and informal enabling institutions. We test these ideas with a meta‐analysis of 177 primary studies, situated in 49 countries. Our results show that the competitive advantage PFFs enjoy is stronger when formal constraining institutions are less developed and when suitable informal enabling institutions are present. However, their competitive advantage is weaker when formal enabling and informal constraining institutions are less developed. We conclude that the competitive advantage of PFFs in emerging markets is contingent on local institutional conditions.

Reference:

Patricio Duran, Marc van Essen, Pursey P. M. A. R. Heugens, Tatiana Kostova and Mike W. Peng. 2018.The Impact of Institutions on the Competitive Advantage of Publicly Listed Family Firms in Emerging Markets, Global Strategy Journal, first published 01 May 2018: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/gsj.1312