The impact of institutions on the competitive advantage of publicly listed family firms in emerging markets

We develop an institutional explanation
for the finding that the competitive advantage publicly
listed family firms (PFFs) enjoy over other publicly
listed firms varies across emerging markets. We propose
that PFF performance is contingent on the state of four
types of institutions—formal constraining, informal constraining,
formal enabling, and informal enabling institutions.
We test these ideas with a meta-analysis of
177 primary studies, situated in 49 countries. Our results
show that the competitive advantage PFFs enjoy is stronger
when formal constraining institutions are less developed
and when suitable informal enabling institutions are
present. However, their competitive advantage is weaker
when formal enabling and informal constraining institutions
are less developed. We conclude that the competitive
advantage of PFFs in emerging markets is contingent on
local institutional conditions.