Job benefits can raise employee satisfaction and thus contribute to a firm’s overall success. However, little is known about how job benefits impact employee satisfaction across different forms of organizations. In this study, we argue that family and non-family firms differ in their social exchange systems and that the fit between the prevalent social exchange system and three types of job benefits (i.e., job benefits of care, status, and life quality) offered to employees influences the extent to which job benefits affect employee satisfaction. We build on a dataset of 2,180 German family and non-family firms gathered from an online employer review platform (Kununu) to test our hypotheses. Results show that job benefits of care lead to more employee satisfaction in family firms, while non-family firms profit more in terms of employee satisfaction from job benefits of life quality. Counterintuitively, we find that job benefits of status lead to higher employee satisfaction in family firms. We contribute to the knowledge on family firms as employers as well as job benefits and employee satisfaction.

工作福利可以提高员工的满意度，从而有助于公司的整体成功。然而，关于工作福利如何影响不同组织形式的员工满意度，我们知之甚少。在本研究中，我们认为家族企业和非家族企业的社会交换系统不同，并且普遍的社会交换系统与所提供的三种工作福利（即护理、地位和生活质量的工作福利）之间的契合度对员工的影响影响工作福利对员工满意度的影响程度。我们基于从在线雇主评论平台 (Kununu) 收集的 2,180 家德国家族和非家族企业的数据集来检验我们的假设。结果表明，护理的工作福利可以提高家族企业的员工满意度，而非家族企业在员工满意度方面从生活质量的工作福利中获益更多。与直觉相反，我们发现地位带来的工作福利会提高家族企业的员工满意度。我们为家族企业作为雇主的知识以及工作福利和员工满意度做出贡献。