Purpose

This paper aims to analyze the contribution of the external director to the governance of family businesses (FBs) in different generations. The authors aim to support the literature regarding the heterogeneity of these companies, showing that the generation of the primary decision-maker is an essential factor that differentiates the FBs from each other. These differences have numerous impacts in governance structures as boards' role and composition.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors hypothesized that the main contribution of external directors to FB controlled by family members of the first generation is to provide resources to the company's survival. As it evolves and the later generations begin to participate as owners and managers, dealing with specific agency problems associated with this type of organization becomes essential. Four activities found in literature were tested: control of parental altruism and intrafamily divergences and provision of resources and external relations. Quantile regression (QR) was applied based on the dependent variables' characteristics, which show a strongly asymmetric distribution for all the models proposed.

Findings

The QR techniques and ordinary least squares (OLS) showed statistically significant results for the agency's activities when comparing the first and the second generations. The contribution of the external director in this context is to overcome the challenges associated with the beginning of sharing ownership and management. The resource provision and the establishment of the relations proved to be more critical in third-generation FBs. At this stage, the directors provide the needed resources for these companies' survival in an increasingly dynamic and complex environment.

Research limitations/implications

Among this work's limitations, the authors highlight the lack of a variable that captures the life cycle in which the company is. They believe that the inclusion of this control factor would bring more robust results to the analysis. Besides, they point to the condensation of the countless activities performed by external directors to just four. This generalization fails to capture the other duties and contributions of this director in the family organizational environment.

Practical implications

This study aims to provide guidelines so that external directors of FBs understand more clearly the needs of the companies in which they operate, whether from the first, second or third generation onward. The contribution of this director may be different for each type of organization. By understanding the weaknesses and concerns inherent to each generational stage, the external director can focus his efforts on adopting actions that effectively contribute to organizational performance.

Originality/value

In Brazil, most studies focus on the effects of board's composition and structure on financial results. In these papers, the data is usually secondary, found on companies' websites. The authors step further in this paper by analyzing primary data from privately held companies, which in Brazil is challenging to access. So, they believe they are surpassing the analysis traditionally found in the literature on the composition of boards of directors in terms of scope and methodology.

中文翻译：

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巴西私人家族企业外部董事的贡献：世代相传的方法

目的

本文旨在分析外部董事对不同世代家族企业（FBs）治理的贡献。作者旨在支持有关这些公司异质性的文献，表明主要决策者的产生是将 FB 彼此区分开来的重要因素。这些差异对治理结构（如董事会的角色和组成）有诸多影响。

设计/方法/途径

作者假设，外部董事对第一代家族成员控制的FB的主要贡献是为公司的生存提供资源。随着它的发展和后代开始作为所有者和管理者参与，处理与此类组织相关的特定代理问题变得至关重要。对文献中发现的四种活动进行了测试：控制父母的利他主义和家庭内部分歧以及提供资源和外部关系。基于因变量的特征应用分位数回归 (QR)，这对所有提出的模型都显示出强烈的不对称分布。

发现

QR 技术和普通最小二乘法 (OLS) 在比较第一代和第二代时显示了该机构活动的统计显着结果。外部董事在这方面的贡献是克服了与开始分享所有权和管理权相关的挑战。事实证明，资源提供和关系的建立在第三代 FB 中更为关键。在这个阶段，董事们为这些公司在日益动态和复杂的环境中生存提供了所需的资源。

研究局限性/影响

在这项工作的局限性中，作者强调缺乏一个变量来捕捉公司所处的生命周期。他们认为，包含此控制因素将为分析带来更稳健的结果。此外，他们指出，外部董事执行的无数活动浓缩为仅四项。这种概括未能体现该董事在家族组织环境中的其他职责和贡献。

实际影响

本研究旨在提供指导方针，使家族企业的外部董事更清楚地了解他们所在公司的需求，无论是第一代、第二代还是第三代。对于每种类型的组织，该主管的贡献可能不同。通过了解每个世代阶段固有的弱点和担忧，外部董事可以集中精力采取能有效促进组织绩效的行动。

原创性/价值

在巴西，大多数研究关注董事会的组成和结构对财务结果的影响。在这些论文中，数据通常是次要的，可以在公司网站上找到。作者在本文中进一步分析了来自私营公司的原始数据，这些数据在巴西很难获取。因此，他们认为他们在范围和方法方面超越了文献中关于董事会构成的传统分析。