Studying the Family Enterprise Holistically

Abstract

This research contributes to the family business literature by empirically demonstrating that family enterprises that give more emphasis to family and business as a whole have better family results and similar business results when compared to those enterprises that limit governance to only the business. The article includes a review of the literature, and it identifies a set of four basic dimensions that focus on different aspects of family enterprise. The study then combines measures of these dimensions to describe both the governance and the nature of the family and the business. A representative sample of 732 Spanish family enterprises enabled the research to reveal empirical support for the theory positing that balanced attention to governing the subsystems is an effective route to family enterprise management.