Family firm types based on the level of professionalism of the top management team

Abstract

This chapter responds to the calls for identifying different categories of family firms. The authors contribute to the literature by extending family firm typologies. To reach this goal, they introduce the construct of the professionalism of the top management team (TMT). In order to expose the multidimensional nature of the TMT, they first review the literature on TMTs based on Hambrick’s and Mason’s (Acad Manag Rev 9, 2:193-206, 1984) demographic variables. Thus, they conduct a cluster analysis on an original dataset of 500 Italian family firms to identify the different “types” of family firms based on a multidimensional conceptualization of TMT professionalization.