How about us? A study about the relationship of the participation in decision-making of non-family employees in a family firm to their job performance

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between the participation of nonfamily employees in decision-making processes in family firms to their job performance. The evolution of the nature of family from a training ground to a ground for business ventures has become prominent over the years. Such transition also involved hiring employees who are not members of the family in order to keep up with the job demands of family firms. This transition meant that the decision-making process in family firms should involve full participation from all of its employees, especially the non-family employees, in order to motivate them to carry out the decisions through their performance in the firm. To analyze the relationship between the decision-making participation and job performance of non-family employees, this study asked questions regarding the participation of non-family employees in decision-making and used the RoleBased Performance Scale by Welbourne, Johnson, and Erez (1997) to measure each employee's performance through self-appraisal. The results of this study showed that decisions from the decision-making processes in family firms that involved the participation of non-family employees did not reflect on the non-family employees job and non-job performance.