Deferne, Marie Alice (2024). Trust in family businesses - three essays on trust between family businesses and their stakeholders. (Thesis). Universität Bern, Bern

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Abstract

This thesis explores the psychological state of trust within the organizational context of family businesses, specifically examining how stakeholders' position – internal or external to the organization – challenge the notion of the "trust advantage" often attributed to family businesses. The first chapter, a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed articles (n=93), develops a relevant framework for measuring trust in the context of family businesses. The following two chapters, both empirical and quantitative studies, focus on stakeholder trust in family businesses from the perspectives of internal stakeholders – namely employees (n=3639) (Chapter 2) and external stakeholders (n=565) – potential customers or employees (Chapter 3). The findings indicate that, at an individual and internal level of analysis (Chapter 2), family businesses do not enjoy a "trust advantage" compared to non-family businesses; however, from an external perspective (Chapter 3), results show that the more involvement of the family is communicated, the higher the perceived trust worthiness from external stakeholders. This thesis also presents limitations, theoretical and practical implications to enrich the future study of trust within family businesses.

Item Type:	Thesis
Dissertation Type:	Cumulative
Date of Defense:	22 May 2024
Subjects:	300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 330 Economics 600 Technology > 650 Management & public relations
Institute / Center:	03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences
Depositing User:	Sarah Stalder
Date Deposited:	20 May 2025 12:30
Last Modified:	22 May 2025 22:25
URI:	https://boristheses.unibe.ch/id/eprint/6171

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