PEOPLE.IDEAS.PERFORMANCE

34 Figure 1: Current structure of the X. family and the age of members. 6RXUFH Own construction The founders, A.X. and B.X. are husband and wife (Figure 1), but the firm was not unprecedented, since A.X.’s father had earlier worked in a state -related travel branch office. A.X. did not take a new commission in another town in the firm which started to liquidate its provincial branch network due to bank debt, i nstead he started an own business. B.X.’s brother also contributed to setting up the firm and participated in the work as well, but he was bought out two years later. The voting rate is divided in 70:30 to A.X. Their sons, C.X. and D.X. both connected to the firm. D.X. is an employee and the nominated successor, while C.X. is presently involved in the business only as an assistant and advisor due to his scientific career but he has earlier been employed as well. E.X. was first an employee and then she becam e C.X.’s wife. E.X. is currently spending her time with the „third generation”, that is one of the reasons she was not interviewed. In addition, it emerged that she would not return to work in this firm later on. $33(5$1&( 2) $*(17 35,1&,3$/ 352%/(0 ,1 7+( &$6( 678'< The studied firm belongs to the category of small enterprise due to the number of employees and roughly one fifth of the staff is a family member. The staff number enables a power structure concentrated in one hand. Although the ownership is shared between the spouses as a first- generation family business, management is in A.X.’s hand according to both the firm documents and the interviewees. As the involved family members’ goals related to the business are currently the same and each of them contributes productively to success to the extent of their knowledge and possibilities, we can assume that agency costs are very low. Nevertheless, this has not always been the case. B.X.’s brother was bought out 2 years after the firm started because „ he lacked skills and his wife began to interfere in things ” (A.X.). Both factors could substantially increase agency costs in the initial period, which eventually led to eliminating these costs with a buy-out. This is not a typical behavior according to stewardship theory, but it resulted in a reduction of agency costs as the conflict of interests within the business no longer existed. There was a case in the past in the life of the firm, about which C.X. provides details. Two key employees yielded to the temptation of the competition without telling the truth about their intentions to the owner. „ … these two people were the key - stones and […] they went to a then newly established office standing up and practically sitting over there. Taking over contacts, taking over everything, and of course lying to everybody’s face about where they were going the whole time. […] It was like a spy movie when we managed to find out that, hold on a second, they were actually with the enemy when, in theory, they should be the two key figures .” (C.X.) C.X. (33) A.X. (60) D.X. (27) B.X.(59) E.X. (31)