Houston, we have a family! Family governance, investors´ expectation and long term orientation

Extant research maintains that the governance arrangements of listed family firms are shaped by conflicting institutional pressures from the family and from financial markets´ observers. While the family´s socioemotional priorities pressure the firm to adopt a family-intensive governance, financial markets´ stakeholders expect listed firms to operate according to a business logic characterized by efficiency, merit, competition and performance. We posit that this characterization is too simplistic, as it does not take into consideration that logics are affected by values and that values vary across cultures. We thus propose that consideration of the cross-cultural differences in business logics would lead to refine and advance our understanding of the determinants of listed family firms´ governance arrangements. We argue and show that in long-term oriented societies an intense involvement of the family in the governance of listed firms is not considered as negatively as past research has assumed.