Corporate Governance and Performance in listed italian family firms

The main goal of this study is to analyse the impact of the board composition in the listed Italian family firms on performance, comparing this impact between family and not family. This variable has not an indifferent impact on business performance. Indeed, a lot of studies underline the importance of the board composition through the composition-performance relationship, also if this relationship considers only financial indicators to measure the performance. The research method is the analysis of a sample composed by listed Italian family and not family firms (FTSE MIB and STAR) and the data used were taken from AIDA database and the “Borsa Italiana” website, that is the Italian website containing the official data of the listed companies. For this study it was decided to consider family firms if two criteria were both respected: first, the family controls a relevant percentage of the ownership and, second, at least one family member occupies management roles and participates in the Board. This study contributes to the literature on family corporate governance and shows that the family role has a positive effect of company performance.