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The management field increasingly recognizes that most firms in the world are family firms and that these entities operate differently from the non-family firms on which most of our current management theories are based. The De Gruyter Handbook of Business Families brings together work from leading academics who explore emerging research themes relevant to business families, particularly drawing in new insights from adjacent disciplines that can advance the family business field.

The handbook challenges the traditional notion of the "single firm–single family" that has characterized most early research on family business. Recognizing that families may simultaneously own or control multiple businesses as well as substantial wealth beyond these firms in the form of financial and non-financial assets, this handbook focuses on business families rather than the narrower construct of family business. The contributions in this handbook explore the relatively neglected dynamics between individuals with family ties that shape the interaction between family and business; business families with multiple businesses; how business families adopt formal rules and processes around their joint activities; and the institutionalization of wealth and business families in society.

The De Gruyter Handbook of Business Families fills a gap in the family business research literature and is an essential reference work for researchers and graduate-level students in the area of business families.

List of Contributors

Chapter 1: Business Families: An Introduction by Michael Carney & Marleen Dieleman

1. Business Families as the Family Behind the Firm

Chapter 2: Family Businesses as Multiplex Relationships by Jian Bai Li and Henning Piezunka

Chapter 3: Family, Organization and Network: A New Approach to a Systems Theory of the Business Family by Heiko Kleve, Lina Nagel, Tom Rüsen and Arist von Schlippe

Chapter 4: Resilient enterprising families by Sabine B. Rau

Chapter 5: Enterprising Families: An Embeddedness Perspective on Offspring’s Entrepreneurial Career Preferences, Cognitions, and Actions by Tommaso Minola, Dinah Spitzley, Giovanna Campopiano, Mara Brumana

Chapter 6: Kinship and Family Businesses on the Move: A Review and a Research Agenda by Juliette Koning and Mikheil Verver

2. Business Families with Multiple Businesses

Chapter 7: Influence of Next-Generation Family Champions on New Venture Creation by Business Families: An Indian Perspective by Navneet Bhatnagar and Kavil Ramachandran

Chapter 8: "All My Firms?" Managing SEW Affective Endowments in Business Family Portfolios by Nava Michael-Tsabari

Chapter 9: Business Family Reputation, Internal Markets and Holdup Agency Costs by Sophie Bacq and Robert S. Nason

Chapter 10: The Transformative Function of Weak Institutional Environments: The case of Business Families in the Arab Middle East by Ramzi Fathallah and Georges Samara

Chapter 11: Evolutionary Long-term Entrepreneurial Processes in Business Families by Peter Rosa and Zografia Bika

Chapter 12: Entrepreneurial Multi-business Families – Evidence from Continental Europe by Andrea Colli

3. Governing the Business Family

Chapter 13: Introducing "Top Governance Teams": Towards an Extension of the Family Business Cluster Model by Rania Labaki and Neus Feliu

Chapter 14: Codes of Governance for Family Businesses by Carole Howorth, Martin R. Kemp, Timothy J. Nichol

Chapter 15: Family Office Research: A Primer by Myung-Seon Song

Chapter 16: Family Wealth Governance and the Role of Advisors by Nadine Kammerlander and Alexandra Bertschi-Michel

Chapter 17: How can a Family Control its Business Without Ownership Influence? A case study of Suzuki Corp by Toshio Goto

Chapter 18: How Business Families Advance their Members’ Careers: The Case of Show Business Families by Yasaman Gorji and Nastaran Simarasl

4. Institutionalization of Wealth and Business Families in Society

Chapter 19: Institutionalizing family legacy, reproducing dynasties by Hanna Kuusela

Chapter 20: The Varieties of Business Families: A Capitalist Class Perspective on Business Family Diversity by Michael Carney and Robert S. Nason

Chapter 21: Philanthropy Through Family Offices by Elena Rivo-López and Mónica Villanueva-Villar

Chapter 22: Traditional Authority in Social Context: Explaining the Relation between Types of Family and Types of Family-Controlled Business Groups by Roy Suddaby, Peter Jaskiewicz, Trevor Israelsen and Ravee Chittoor

Chapter 23: Migrant business families in Central America by Allan Discua Cruz and Leonardo Centeno-Caffarena

Chapter 24: Succession Process and the Model of Change in a Transgenerational Family Business by Rodrigo Basco and Arpita Vyas

5. The Future of Business Families Research

Chapter 25: Business families: Promising future research directions by Michael Carney and Marleen Dieleman

List of Figures

List of Tables

Index