Shareholders and Top Management

This article analyzes the conflicts of interests and objectives between family business owners and the top management team. It also covers family business shareholder training and education as incentive systems aimed at mitigating conflicts between top managers and shareholders. Commitment, which Gallo (1991) highlights as one of the strengths of family businesses, is the dependent variable throughout this study. The research focuses on the family and firm sys-tems (Donnelley, 1964; Lansberg, 1983) and their overlaps. The objective here is to identify the factors that influence the shareholder commit-ment level to the family business—specifically, the elements and mechanisms conducive to an alignment of interests between the nonemployed shareholders and the top management team. Th