This commentary extends Hillier, Martínez, Patel, Pindado, and Requejo (2018) by placing their insights within a wider context of the debate between the agency theory and stewardship theory. To reconcile the conflicts between the two theories, we propose a family-value perspective to incorporate the intrinsic heterogeneity of family firms. We highlight how different family values may lead to different strategic behavior and how various theoretical perspectives may be best used to describe the behavior of family firms with certain specific values.
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