We address an ongoing controversy over whether family firms are better or worse places to work than are non-family firms. Extending socioemotional wealth theory based on the behavioral agency model, we argue that family owners strive to protect and enhance their socioemotional endowments by fostering stronger perceptions of organizational caring among their employees compared to those working for non-family firms. We develop and validate an employee perceived organizational caring (EMPOCARE) scale across three studies and test our hypotheses in a fourth study. We test a cross-level model and find that—even after controlling for formal human resource management programs and benefits—employees report higher EMPOCARE in family than non-family firms and that EMPOCARE tends to be experienced more similarly across organizational hierarchy levels in family than non-family firms. We further posit and find that EMPOCARE improves firm-level labor productivity and individual-level thriving at work. Empirical support for our cross-level EMPOCARE model comes from survey and archival data from 54,000+ employees in 180 firms in Brazil. We discuss implications for theory and practice.

我们一直在争论家族企业是比非家族企业更好还是更糟糕的工作场所。扩展了基于行为代理模型的社会情感财富理论，我们认为，与在非家族企业工作的人相比，家庭所有者通过树立更强的员工对组织关怀的认识，努力保护和增强他们的社会情感end赋。我们开发并验证员工对组织的关怀（EMPOCARE）涵盖了三项研究，并在第四项研究中检验了我们的假设。我们测试了一个跨级别的模型，发现-即使在控制了正式的人力资源管理计划和福利之后，员工所报告的家庭EMPOCARE高于非家族企业，并且EMPOCARE在家庭的组织层次结构层次上的经历比在家族企业中更为相似。非家族企业。我们进一步得出结论，发现EMPOCARE可以提高公司一级的劳动生产率和个人一级的工作蓬勃发展。来自巴西180家公司的54,000多名员工的调查和档案数据为我们的跨级别EMPOCARE模型提供了实证支持。我们讨论对理论和实践的启示。