Are family owners and managers good stewards in global crises? Evidence from stock market reactions to Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic as a truly global crisis has shown the importance of firm resilience in times of crisis. Yet, so far, we lack an understanding of the role of firm ownership and management in building this resilience. Based on stewardship theory, we posit that family management and ownership help firms to navigate through a global crisis. To test our predictions, we analyze how Covid-related negative events affect the stock market reactions of 300 German listed firms and how family ownership and management moderate these effects. Our cross-sectional regression results show a positive effect of family management while no such effect was found for family ownership. We contribute to the research on family involvement and stewardship in crisis situations by showing that family ownership and management constitute distinct determinants of stewardship behavior and by bringing a context element into family business stewardship research that was missing so far in the literature. Practical implications exist for family firm’s top management employment policies and capital market communication in crisis situations.