Statistics For Family Businesses in Finland

ended

The Finnish Family Firms Association and Statistics Finland will together collect the data in the area of family businesses. The main objective of the project is to improve long-term reliable statistics on family businesses at national level. The project will increase the visibility of the role of the family businesses in the Finnish society and aims at creating further interest to develop analysis further to study their impact on national economic performance. It will also have a national-wide impact on the public discussion on the success factors of the Finnish society and develop statistics for family businesses. As a starting point of the study family businesses will be screened from the Annual Statistics of the Finnish Business Register using legal form, type of ownership, branch of industry and size of the enterprise group as a selection criteria. Postal and phone interviews will be first made among potential family businesses to identify family business status of the firm using the FB definition determined by the EU. The questions raised to the owner(s), to the CEO or to the CFO: Do you categorize your company as a Family Business? If so, has the generation transfer(s) taken place in the history of your company? Family Business status will be listed as a new variable into the datafiles. Statistical data base is created by microdata –linking, where data mainly from Production System for Business Statistics is utilised. Data base consists of e.g. the value of the goods and services produced, personnel, financial statements and itemisation of turnover and expenditure. Data base also include information on the growth of enterprises and how they have managed. We will also publish a report on analysed data and organize a high-level conference on the results and further discussion on improving the data collection further to enable e.g. analysis on macro economy and financial stability.