Although family‐owned and managed firms are the predominant form of business organization in the world today, little systematic research exists on these companies. This paper builds upon insights found in the emerging literature on these enterprises and upon our own observations to provide a conceptual frame‐work to better understand these complex organizations. We introduce the concept of the Bivalent Attributes–a unique, inherent feature of an organization that is the source of both advantages and disadvantages–to explain the dynamics of the family firm.

Providing clear goals for a company and communicating them are among the most powerful means for guiding the behavior of the people in an organization. In this article, we explore the range of objectives or goals of family‐owned and ‐managed companies and identify those most commonly regarded as important by owner‐managers. Further, we describe six major empirical dimensions of goals that we derived by factor‐analytic procedures. Finally, we suggest how researchers, managers, and consultants can use our work to help owner‐managers clarify and communicate their goals.

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The authors examine the relationship between the life cycles of fathers and sons who work together, concluding that the quality of the work relationship varies as a function of their respective life stages. The intersection of their individual developmental paths can have positive or negative effects on the nature of the work relationship, on the resolution of such problem issues as succession, and on productivity.

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