Is Blood Thicker Than Water? A Study of Stewardship Perceptions in Family Business
研究了家族企业中家族成员与非家族员工在管家感知上的差异，发现家族成员对领导层的价值承诺、信任和管家感知更高，代理感知更低，表明血缘关系确实影响管家行为。
Stewardship theory has been used to explain the culture and relationships within family businesses. Researchers have also demonstrated that stewardship leads to superior family business performance. To date, few empirical analyses have examined the situational mechanisms associated with stewardship in family business. This paper examines the role of the family in explaining stewardship within a family business, including the role of trust, value commitment, and agency. We find that value commitment, trust, and agency perceptions explain a significant portion of stewardship variance for family and nonfamily business employees. We further find that family member employees perceive significantly higher value commitment, trust, and stewardship perceptions and lower agency perceptions in family firm leadership than nonfamily members, suggesting that blood is indeed thicker than water.