THE ROLE OF FAMILY TIES IN AGENCY CONTRACTS.

Abstract

Drawing on data based on the entire population of Spanish newspapers over 27 years , this study shows that firm performance and business risk are much stronger predictors of chief executive tenure when a firm's owners and its executive have family ties and that the organizational consequences of CEO dismissal are more favorable when the replaced CEO is a member of the family owning the firm.The study also demonstrates that executives operating under weakly relational (less ambiguous) contracts are held more accountable for firm performance and business risk outcomes, even under nonfamily contracting.