Why family still matters in business reputation

In 2026 Barilla enters for the first time the top 10 of the Global RepTrak 100, the world's leading ranking that measures the reputation of global companies. Rankings don't just assign positions: when read beyond the data, they help you understand which traits, at any given moment, are actually being rewarded. And when the metric is not just performance, but reputation, the picture becomes even more interesting, because it is not just brand strength that counts, but the quality of trust that a company manages to build over time.

It is in this perspective that the Global RepTrak 100 2026 should be observed. More than a simple ranking of the companies with the highest reputational levels, the ranking returns the elements that make a company credible in the eyes of its stakeholders today. The top ten positions include LEGO, Samsung, Ferrari, Levi Strauss and, for the first time, Barilla: realities that are profoundly different in terms of sector, geography and ownership structure, but which are united - albeit with different intensity and in different ways - by values, corporate culture, long-term vision and industrial traditions that are woven around a clear family matrix.

This is not a detail. In half of the top ten, in fact, the family factor remains a highly visible component, albeit declining in different forms. The most straightforward cases are those of LEGO and Barilla: the former with ownership still in the hands of the founding family Kirk Kristiansen, the latter with the Barilla brothers, the expression of the fourth generation, at the top of the group. Samsung embodies the model of Korean family capitalism, while Ferrari is now in a more hybrid form, although its governance retains a clear trace of family continuity in the figure of Piero Ferrari. Levi Strauss, finally, maintains a still clearly recognisable family imprint, which is reflected both in its governance and in the ownership structure linked to the Haas family.

It would be improper to claim that the family 'produces' reputation. Family character does not, in itself, generate trust. Many of the top-ranked companies seem to share not only strong brands or quality products, but also a cultural and value continuity that helps preserve their identity and steer their trajectory over the long term.

It is at this level that the reflection gains depth. In family businesses, reputation is not only a competitive resource or a market indicator: it is often also a projection of the family itself, its name, its history, its legacy. It is precisely for this reason that it tends to be regarded less as a variable to be maximised and more as an asset to be preserved over time. And here, continuity of ownership can make all the difference. This is not because the family character automatically produces trust, but because it can place the company beyond a longer time horizon, in which brand protection, attention to quality and consistency between values and behaviour count more than immediate returns. It is a logic that recalls one of the central themes of our studies on family businesses: reputation not as a mere competitive lever, but as a legacy to be preserved and passed on, and as a key dimension of the socio-emotional heritage of an entrepreneurial family that distinguishes its semantic and affective dimension. There is, of course, also the other side of the coin. The family can be a factor of stability, but it is not always so. It can give strength to a company's identity and consolidate its credibility, but it can also slow it down and make it less ready to change. That is why the point is not ownership per se, but the way it is interpreted and governed.