Family businesses vary considerably in size, ranging from small entrepreneurial ventures over medium-sized companies to large global corporations. However, we know little about how family businesses grow. Our research analyses differences in growth patterns between family and non-family businesses, considering two dimensions of business growth: sales (performance) and employees (resources). Based on the Penrosean resource-based view of the firm and socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective, we test and find —using a panel of 2000 Spanish manufacturing companies (2006–2014) —that family businesses tend to grow less than non-family businesses in terms of sales but more in terms of employees. Our research casts doubt on the myth of low growth in family businesses and shows that SEW should complement the Penrosean approach to explain the growth of family businesses.

家族企业的规模差异很大，从中型公司的小型创业企业到大型跨国公司。然而，我们对家族企业如何成长知之甚少。我们的研究分析了家族企业和非家族企业在增长模式上的差异，考虑了企业增长的两个维度：销售（绩效）和员工（资源）。基于 Penrosean 基于资源的公司观点和社会情感财富 (SEW) 的观点，我们测试并发现——使用 2000 家西班牙制造公司（2006-2014）——家族企业的增长往往低于非家族企业在销售额方面，但在员工方面更多。