Benefitting from benefits—A comparison of employee satisfaction in family and non-family firms

Job benefits can raise employee satisfaction and thus contribute to a firm’s overall success. However, little is known about how job benefits impact employee satisfaction across different forms of organizations. In this study, we argue that family and non-family firms differ in their social exchange systems and that the fit between the prevalent social exchange system and three types of job benefits (i.e., job benefits of care, status, and life quality) offered to employees influences the extent to which job benefits affect employee satisfaction. We build on a dataset of 2,180 German family and non-family firms gathered from an online employer review platform (Kununu) to test our hypotheses. Results show that job benefits of care lead to more employee satisfaction in family firms, while non-family firms profit more in terms of employee satisfaction from job benefits of life quality. Counterintuitively, we find that job benefits of status lead to higher employee satisfaction in family firms. We contribute to the knowledge on family firms as employers as well as job benefits and employee satisfaction.