What Is Family Business Research

LITERATURE REVIEW

This paper begins with a summary of the research and literature presented about family-owned businesses in general terms, including a summary of other literature assessments. Then this is continued by the studies on business success and profitability. A discussion of the characteristics of business owners and managers is followed by the investigation of business characteristics. And then the final part consist of comprised conceptual framework and a list of hypotheses.

Overview of Family Business Research

In order to shorten much of the research that had been conducted on family businesses, Sharma (2004) conducted an overview project that outlined the general topics of interest, methodological frameworks, and conclusions of 217 refereed articles that had been published prior to 2004. The author organized the literature into several leveled categories (i.e., individual, interpersonal or group, organizational, societal) based on the specific topic on which the authors focused. By organizing the information into these categories, the author was able to illustrate the focus within each article. Sharma also indicated that the entire field of family business research is moving in a positive direction toward more sophisticated research that is guided by generally established theory. Stafford et al. (1999) presented an article that developed a new conceptual framework, the Sustainable Family Business Model (the conceptual framework used in the present research study), to add to some of the existing models used in family business 8 research.

The focal objective was to explain how a systems model could be used to guide family business. Many of the scholars that conducted family business research prior to this used vari...

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...of non-family ownership. However, there is evidence to believe that family businesses with larger groups of directors and managers are associated with higher levels of growth on sales revenues.

In an article by Adams, Manners, Astrachan, and Mazzola (2004), the importance of owners and managers participating goal situation’s was addressed. Integrating goal setting means the degree to which family business managers develop business goals and objectives, and then actually execute the goals and objectives. Adams et al. stated that a business needs to be succeeded in a way that would help it to stay alive, and a common way to make sure that a business survived is for it to make money. Goal setting for profit and other objectives is an important task. The authors discussed the cost-of capital, which is the amount of return on investment necessary to reach business goals.