FAMILY MEMBER CONTRIBUTION ON THE SUCCESS OF SMALL FAMILY BUSINESSES: A CASE STUDY ON BRASSWARE BUSINESSES IN KANDY

Abstract

Most of economies around the world are dominated by family firms, which have made it an important subject to research on. There is a dearth of research in Sri Lanka concerning small family businesses, many scholars around the globe have argued that successful family businesses are likely to have supportive relationships among family members whilst unsuccessful family businesses are likely to have conflicting relationships. This study adopted case study methodology in the context of Brassware Industry Small Family Businesses in Kandy, Sri Lanka, with the objective of understanding the impact of family members on success of small family businesses. A specific industry was considered in order to control various industry specific extraneous variables that might influence the business success/failure. The study was conducted in two main phases, a qualitative and a quantitative phase. The successful small family businesses were identified by using a success index. The relationship between the degree of family member contribution and the small family business success was tested using statistical analyses. Findings reveal that there exists a positive relationship between the supportive family member contribution and the small family business success. Furthermore, most number of successful small family businesses received support from their family members via emotional, instrumental social (paid/unpaid work), instrumental material support (financial and/or other resource needs) and nominal forms. Nominal or dummy contribution of family members is a new form of family member support which emerged during the initial phase of the study, which is defined for the purpose of this study as the support the family members extend to the business through their fame, recognition and/or societal status without actively contributing to the business operations via any other identified forms of contributions. It can be concluded that the more a given business receives family member support through all forms of identified contributions the more the small family business success will be.


Key Words: Small Family Business, Family Member Contribution, Success Index, Small Family Business Success, Brassware Industry Small Family Businesses

For full paper: fmscresearch@sjp.ac.lk