A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

This article uses Ajzen's theory of planned behavior to build an entrepreneurial intention questionnaire (EIQ) and analyzes its psychometric properties. The entrepreneurial intention model is then ...

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/etap_318.pdf?abstractid=1396448&mirid=5

Development and Cross-Cultural Application of a Specific Instrument to Measure Entrepreneurial Intentions

Purpose – Green supply chain management is a concept that is gaining popularity in the South East Asian region. For many organizations in this region it is a way to demonstrate their sincere commitment to sustainability. However, if green supply chain management practices are to be fully adopted by all organizations in South East Asia, a demonstrable link between such measures and improving economic performance and competitiveness is necessary. This paper endeavors to identify potential linkages between green supply chain management, as an initiative for environmental enhancement, economic performance and competitiveness amongst a sample of companies in South East Asia.Design/methodology/approach – For this purpose a conceptual model was developed from literature sources and data collected using a structured questionnaire mailed to a sample of leading edge ISO14001 certified companies in South East Asia followed by structural equation modelling.Findings – The analysis identified that greening the differen...

Do green supply chains lead to competitiveness and economic performance

This article makes the case for the socioemotional wealth (SEW) approach as the potential dominant paradigm in the family business field. The authors argue that SEW is the most important differentiator of the family firm as a unique entity and, as such, helps explain why family firms behave distinctively. In doing so, the authors review the concept of SEW, its different dimensions, and its links with other theoretical approaches. The authors also address the issue of how to measure this construct and offer various alternatives for operationalizing it. Finally, they offer a set of topics that can be pursued in future studies using the SEW approach.

Socioemotional Wealth in Family Firms Theoretical Dimensions, Assessment Approaches, and Agenda for Future Research

Based on a review of 217 refereed articles on family business studies, the literature is organized according to its focus on individual, interpersonal or group, organizational, and societal levels of analyses. An assessment of the status of our current understanding at each level is provided and directions for future research are suggested. A discussion of definitional issues, bases of distinctiveness, and family firm performance is used to help understand the domain or scope of the field. Methodological issues and strategies aimed to enhance the pace at which the field achieves a distinctive legitimate place in organizational studies are presented.

An Overview of the Field of Family Business Studies: Current Status and Directions for the Future

This article proposes an alternative method for assessing the extent of family influence on any enterprise, enabling the measurement of the impact of family on outcomes such as success, failure, strategy, and operations. This proposed method, utilizing a standardized and valid instrument— the F-PEC—enables the assessment of family influence on a continuous scale rather than restrict its use as a categorical (e.g., yes/no) variable. The F-PEC comprises three subscales: power, experience, and culture. This article discusses these scales in detail.

The F-PEC Scale of Family Influence: A Proposal for Solving the Family Business Definition Problem

For a solution to the family business definition dilemma, we propose the application of a scale that assesses the extent and the quality of family influence via the measurement of three dimensions: Power, Experience, and Culture. The Family Influence on Power, Experience, and Culture (F-PEC) scale is tested rigorously, utilizing a sample of more than 1,000 randomly selected companies, through the application of exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic techniques. The scale demonstrates high levels of reliability. F-PEC has been applied in a number of studies, contributing to theory development, particularly in terms of the impact of family influence on distinct resources, and as a source of competitive advantage.

The F–PEC Scale of Family Influence: Construction, Validation, and Further Implication for Theory:

Capital structure decision making: a model for family business

During the previous decade, the multi-disciplinary field of family business has advanced significantly in terms of advances in theory, development of sophisticated empirical instruments, systematic measurement of family business activity, use of alternative research methodologies and deployment of robust tools of analysis. This second edition of the Handbook of Research on Family Business presents important research and conceptual developments across a broad range of topics. The contributors - notable researchers in the field - explore the frontiers of knowledge in family business entrepreneurship and stimulate critical thinking, enriching the repository of theoretical frameworks and methodologies.

Handbook of Research on Family Business

In June 1991, the Australian Accounting Standards Board issued AASB 1026, Statement of Cash Flows. Since replacing the funds flow statement, the new accounting standard has become a compulsory part of Australian corporate financial reporting. In contrast to cash flow developments in the US and UK. the emergence of AASB 1026 has been preceded by almost no significant research attention by Australian academics. This study surveyed the attitudes to cash flow statements of 210 public companies listed on the Australian stock exchange. Findings revealed that there was particularly strong support for the essential provisions of AASB 1026 and the underlying principles of cash flow reporting. The results indicated that the cash flow statement is important for a wide variety of internal and external decision contexts, and appealed to a wide range of users. Furthermore, compared with previous research (e.g. McEnroe, 1989), the present survey demonstrated that operating profit was not considered by a large n...

Kosmas X. Smyrnios

Papers

The F-PEC Scale of Family Influence: A Proposal for Solving the Family Business Definition Problem

The F–PEC Scale of Family Influence: Construction, Validation, and Further Implication for Theory:

Capital structure decision making: a model for family business

Handbook of Research on Family Business

An Evaluation of the Decision Usefulness of Cash Flow Statements by Australian Reporting Entities