School of Business & Management
Research Seminar Series

Tuesday 22nd January 2013, 12:30 – 14:00  Room CY014

“Keeping It In The Family: Accounting for Family Control In A Public Listed Company”

Presented By : Dr Loukas G. Glyptis

This research examines how a family have retained control of a business despite a large part of it being quoted on a major international stock exchange; and how accounting is implicated in the process. Informed by structuration theory, it explores the interplay of schemas, resources and actions in the case of a Greek shipping company over a twenty year period. It concludes that it was an ideology, projected as a “Greek way” of shipping, which formed the basis of legitimation, and formed the most significant resource used by the family to maintain control. In this light, accounting is revealed as an essential resource for family members to present evidence to the investor community of the financial success of practices based on this ideology, thereby reinforcing existing structures of domination.