Reputation-based firms resist clear ownership definition

Evidence

Ownership of a protection firm is not easy to define. In general it is as difficult to specify as it is to pin down the exact meaning of property for an enterprise that relies heavily on the reputation of the persons who are running it (such as a bank, an insurance company, an advertising agency, or an artist’s studio). — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 151

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the diamond industry’s reputation-heavy private governance in ‘Opting out of the Legal System’ — ownership unclear where reputational capital dominates, mirroring DeBeers sight-holder status.
• QUESTION: Implication: if ownership is hard to define in reputation firms, how does succession work in mafia families? Gamble on a future research question about organizational continuity.