Effects of Family Socialization in the Organizational Commitment of the Family Firms from the Moral Economy Perspective

This study examines the effects of socializing activity of the owned family in family firms in order to find out if the special characteristics of the socializing processes in this type of firm can contribute to defining a climate that favors employees’ commitment to the organization. For this purpose, this study uses the main arguments of the sociological approach known as moral economy. The data required for this analysis was collected using a self-administered postal questionnaire and the results show that the special type of socialization that takes place in the family firm, and particularly the emotional mediation that this type of socialization tends to entail, favors the appearance of noneconomic links between employers and employees. Thus, in family firms the climate favors the management of the affective, normative, and symbolic aspects. The authors consider that this provides an explanation for the higher levels of identification, involvement, and loyalty – and consequently organizational commitment – that they find empirically among the employees of such firms.