An Exploratory Study of Family Employees in Taiwanese Owned Chinese Family Businesses

Through the Lens of Emotional-oriented Theories

Abstract

Despite decades of research, most research investigating issues concerning staff recruitment and retention in the family firm setting tends to concentrate on non-family employees. Relatively little attention has been paid to family members of the owner(s) of the firm as well as the non-core family employees. This trend is also manifest in Chinese family business research. The article seeks to shed light on issues associated with family employees, in particular the non-core family employees, regarding the reasons why they joined their family firm and why they will remain in the firm through the lens of a combination of two theoretical perspectives, namely, the stewardship theory and socioemotional wealth theory. A qualitative research approach is adopted to illustrate the phenomenon in-depth. A semi-structured interview is utilised as a means of data collection. Our main findings indicate that the reasons for family members to join and remain in the family firm are affected by a number of factors, such as in what way they perceive the future of the business and their personal career development in the company, their emotional ties with the owners’ family, and the practices or norms regarding the extent to which and how family members should be involved in the business.