Corporate governance and the ownership transfer process are attracting academic and practitioner attention. Prior ownership and governance configurations have been linked with the hostile bid takeover process (Song and Walkling, 1993; O’Sullivan and Wong, 1999), as well as in relation to leveraged buy-outs of listed corporations or their divisions (Thompson and Wright, 1995; Halpern et al., 1999;Weir et al.,2005).Currently, there is a dearth of empirical evidence relating to how private firms move across ownership thresholds, defined as the transition from one phase of a firm’s life-cycle to another. Theorists suggest that the process of moving across thresholds needs to be explored with regard to contrasting governance structures (Lynall et al.,2003;Filatotchev and Wright,2005).In this study, we focus on the ownership transition process relating to private family-owned firms that have reported an ownership transition through a management buy-out (MBO)or a management buy-in(MBI).
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