Family Business

Family firms are essential to both emerging and advanced economies. Nearly 90% of all firms worldwide are family firms and outnumber non-family firms in terms of their contribution to global economic activity and employment. Due to the high relevance of family firms for the worldwide economy, scholars have recognized family business as a research field. This chapter provides a brief overview on family business research including a discussion of family firm definitions and family firm originations as well as a description of family firm behavior and family firms’ unique idiosyncratic goals. The chapter concludes with ideas for future research. Specifically, it emphasizes that family firms are now recognized as heterogeneous in the literature rather than characterized as a uniform block, and that this underlying heterogeneity offers multifarious opportunities for future research endeavors.