Best Empirical Paper of the Ent:Division at the Academy of Management

Congratulations to CeFEO Members Massimo Baù and Francesco Chirico who are the recipients of the Best Empirical Paper Award at the Academy of Management — Entrepreneurship Division, for the paper “Slack and Performance in Family Owned SMEs: An Agency Theory Perspective” co-authored by Tommaso Minola, Philipp Sieger, and Alfredo De Massis.

In this paper, the authors investigate to what extent financial slack (i.e. an excess in liquid and easily redeployable assets) facilitates ROA (i.e. profitability). Intriguing and counterintuitive findings emerge on the relative superior ability of family firms to extract economic value from slack resources.