Directors’ Characteristics and Firm’s Performance: Research Design and Hypotheses

In this chapter, I analyze the main characteristics of family-controlled firms. In the first part of this chapter, I provide a literature review and the main definitions of family-controlled firms, and in the second part, I introduce the impact that family firms can have on the composition of the board of directors according to the literature. In particular, I highlight that recent studies indicate that family firms pursue different goals from nonfamily-controlled firms. To be precise, they select board members to import the knowledge that may be lacking among family members sitting on the board. In the final part of this chapter, I present the main characteristics of Italian family-controlled firms. I first focus on the geographical distribution and on the role of the industrial districts and then highlight the main sectors in which these firms operate.