Managerial Efficiency in Family Owned Firms in Pakistan - An Examination of Listed Firms

We examine a set of listed family firms through the means of a survey that seeks to understand the variations in the level of training, education and experience across this business form. We find great degree of concentration of family members in the top management in key critical positions. Other positions in the top management that involve technical knowledge are the ones that are left open to professionals (outside managers). However, most of the decision-making takes place within the milieu of the family. There is also a variation across firms in the level of importance according to formal training schemes, with some firms not having any access to training budgets. We find more democratic decision-making structures involving outsiders and regular training of management are key to superior performance among family firms for several reasons.