Does it make a difference if a family-owned business is headed by a woman versus a man? According to a new study, it does. In fact, according to research, family-owned businesses run by women thrive when family members donate their time to help the company. But when men run the family business, donated family time is linked to lower revenue. This is one of the conclusions drawn by a study that explored gender issues and how they affect family business management. In this series, we’ll examine some of these findings. “Women and men seem to structure the interaction between work and family quite a bit differently when they are running the family business,” said Kathryn Stafford, associate professor of consumer sciences at Ohio State University. “You can see differences in the use of family members at work, how they handle disruptions at work and home, and a wide variety of other variations.” The use of family members is one example. Stafford says men may use unpaid family members only as a last resort when the business is in trouble, preferring to hire outside workers. That may be why use of family members is linked to lower revenue when men are managers.
On the other hand, women may see using relatives at work as a way to have family with them and to share time together. “Women seem to see it as a win-win situation, while men don't think it is a good idea to mix business and family in this way,” Stafford said.
Stafford conducted the study with Sharon Danes and Johnben Loy of the University of Minnesota. Their results appear in the October 2007 issue of the Journal of Business Research. This project used data from the National Family Business Survey, which studied family businesses in 1997 and the same businesses again in 2000. A total of 301 family businesses were included in this study. The survey asked a variety of questions designed to identify the primary business owner. If the interviewer was told that both spouses owned the business equally, it was determined which spouse was most involved in day-to-day business management. The results of this study, like many others, show that family businesses owned or managed by women earn less revenue than those owned by men. But part of the reason may be that women have goals other than maximizing profit, Stafford said. Other studies have shown that women often start businesses because they want to spend more time with their families, Stafford said, and the fact that women tend to use family members as unpaid workers bears this out. In the next part of this series, we’ll view additional findings of the study. | 
