Founder effectiveness in sustaining financial performance: influence of family ownership

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the association between the founder-CEO and the level of firm financial sustainability in the presence of family ownership by using a unique dataset of publicly listed construction firms in Malaysia from 2009 to 2017. Our regression results show that the founder-CEO and family ownership significantly and negatively affect financial sustainability, which is proxied by operational self-sufficiency. However, their negative effects are alleviated when the founder-CEO and family ownership interact. These results show that the founder-CEO may be ineffective in sustaining the financial performance in the construction industry. This study calls for greater examinations of founder effectiveness under the influence of family ownership.