Original title: The Psychological Sustainability of Family Firms: Work–Family Spillover and Organizational Trust in an Italian Manufacturing SME
The researchers studied one small, family-owned manufacturing firm in Italy. They interviewed family members who worked in management and surveyed employees who were not part of the family. Family managers described conflict over new ideas and decision-making, alongside a succession that was expected but never formally planned. Employees reported a generally positive workplace, but those who perceived more nepotism tended to trust the organization less.
Imagine a family trying to run a shared kitchen while deciding who will take charge next. Arguments about whose way to cook should be used can spill into family time, while other people using the kitchen may worry that relatives get special treatment. In this paper, the family’s arguments and unclear handover match the first problem, while employees’ fairness concerns match the second; the two problems overlap only partly.
Small family firms depend on both family relationships and employee trust. The findings suggest that succession tensions inside the family and fairness concerns among employees can create separate risks, so planning succession and managing people both matter.
The abstract describes one small Italian family-owned manufacturing firm, so it does not establish that the same patterns hold across other family firms or countries. It reports an association between perceived nepotism and trust, not proof that nepotism causes lower trust. It does not report results for every employee measure it assessed.
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The Psychological Sustainability of Family Firms: Work–Family Spillover and Organizational Trust in an Italian Manufacturing SME — Teresa Galanti, Morena Santoriello, Camilla Canonico et al. — Sustainability — doi:10.3390/su181910183
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.