21508: Family First? Exploring Nonfamily Employee Job Satisfaction in Family Firms (session 26124)

While family firms are often seen as creating a supportive work environment, their effect on job satisfaction, particularly for non-family employees, remains a topic of debate. Extant literature dwells heavily on the family firm perspective and the employer characteristics of family firms. Drawing on the job satisfaction and family business literature, we shift the focus toward non-family employees by investigating whether and how family ownership influences employees’ job satisfaction. Using a representative sample of 21,585 non-family employees across 11,741 firms from 1997 to 2017, we show that family ownership is negatively associated with job satisfaction. Furthermore, we find that non-family employees in family firms report lower job autonomy, receive less job training opportunities, and experience higher physical job demands compared to their counterparts in non-family firms. These findings contribute to the ongoing debate on whether family firms are good or bad employers and provide practical insights for enhancing workplace attributes in family-owned businesses.

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