The Family Firm: A Synthesis, Stylized Facts, and Future Research Directions

In acknowledging and exploiting the substantial heterogeneity among family firms, scholars are increasingly stepping away from the dichotomization of family influence to better understand critical nuances that explain how, why, and when family firms differ from their nonfamily counterparts. By means of a sample of privately-held family firms, this study advances the literature by showing that various sources of heterogeneity are correlated. We take a family-level perspective and show how heterogeneous family values interact with more traditional factors that have received ample scholarly attention such as succession, firm strategies, ownership and governance, and financial policies. Specifically, we present an extensive synthesis of the recent and topical literature on each topic and then provide stylized facts on intercorrelations between sources of family firm heterogeneity based on survey data on over 900 family firms. Lastly, we delineate a detailed research agenda to push the field forward.