Financial Distress and Performance among Family SMEs
While most studies focus on the key success factors of family SMEs, little is known about the antecedents and outcomes of financial distress in this specific context. Drawing on the socioemotional wealth perspective, this research tries to fill this gap by exploring how the family status of SMEs influences the degree of financial distress and how the exposure to financial distress may explain differences in performance between family and nonfamily SMEs. Based on a sample of 246 Belgian SMEs, the results show that family SMEs are more exposed to financial distress than nonfamily SMEs. Furthermore, it also appears that, among firms that experience financial distress, family SMEs perform better than nonfamily SMEs. However, among SMEs that do not experience financial distress, nonfamily SMEs perform the best.