Family firms in the ownership network: clustering, bridging, and embeddedness

Abstract

In this article, we investigate family firms' position in the intercorporate ownership network. Rooting our predictions in the Behavioral Agency Model and a Network analytical framework, we predict and find that family involvement decreases the likelihood of business group affiliation and of cross-group ties leading to a lower embeddedness within the overall network. We predict and find the opposite effect for community involvement. We use the complete longitudinal dataset of publicly listed firms' corporate ownership ties in India (2001, 2005, and 2009). Theoretical and substantive contributions are to research on family businesses and to research on interorganizational networks.