Theories Of Family Business And Research On The Growth Of Family Business In China

The thesis attempts to institute a theoretical framework governing the research on family business, within which the internal and external issues concerning the growth of family businesses are discussed from the perspectives of economics, sociology, psychology, culture and management science. It comprises seven chapters and includes 150,000 Chinese characters.In the part of theoretical analysis, the thesis first defines the concepts related to family business, discusses the interaction between kinship and economic relations and the mutual benefits between the economic behavior and social relations by focusing on the origin of the family business, and documents the economic value of the kinship that the family business has to depend on in the first place. Besides, it analyzes the social capital and networking function of kinship, discusses the interaction mechanism between the economic behavior of the family business and kinship among other social relations and argues the inevitable birth of the family business based on an socioeconomic logic. Then, the thesis addresses the corporatization of family business. Because of the predominant role of the kinship governance at the preliminary stage of family business, it is impossible to eradicate it when employing the corporate system to reorganize the family business that has already grown up. The author rationalizes the mixed governance of the family business by applying analysis to the history and inevitability of introducing professional management to the family business to accomplish corporatization and the different influences of the kinship and contractual governance on the decision-making of the family business. Third, the thesis approaches the capital socialization of the family business. During its growth, the family business has to get integrated with the financial capital for raising funds from the general public in the impersonalized capital market. The family business continues its integration with the human capital, especially the management resources, from outside in the meantime of the gradual dilution of family equity and introduction of outside capital. Here, theoretical analysis is applied to the motivation, governance role and potential expropriation by the controlling family as majority shareholder; a dynamic model is employed to discuss how the evolution of the family business is influenced by the drawbacks of the capital market; several corollaries are concluded based on theoretical models as regards the relation of family business with the capital market.In the part of the positive analysis, the cases of Hong Kong are anatomized to define how the governance of the family business can be effective. The author probesinto the isomorphism and heterogeneity of the governance of family business and pinpoints its peculiarity through a comparison between the Anglo-Saxon, Japan-German and family models. Moreover, the author argues the success of family governance in Hong Kong from the perspectives of corporate governance reform (including corporate regulation) and financial market.Following the above analysis, the thesis shifts to focus on growth of the modern family business in China. The integration of economic transition in China with the general theoretical framework instituted above benefits a better understanding of the status quo and the problems of the modern family business in China. As for the external rules governing the growth of the family business, the author first discusses the historical and institutional conditions required for the growth of family business in the transformation from central planning to market-oriented economy, then analyzes the influence of the ownership system reform and gradual establishment of property rights system on the growth of the family business, and finally touches the role of non-institutional rules in the growth of family business. The following chapter is devoted to the internal rules governing the growth of the family business in China. The author discusses the influence of the Chinese f...