The business family 3.0: Dynastic business families as families, organizations and networks-Outline of a theory extension

摘要

This paper's point of departure is that business families are permanently confronted with a dual function: They engage in typical family relations yet also have formal decision-making processes for business and family strategy. However, large business families-which may consist of several hundred shareholders who own one or more family businesses-are confronted with an additional challenge. Alongside being simultaneously a family and an organization, they also have to establish and maintain notions of membership and modes of communication between distantly related shareholders. This we have called family network or family 3.0. The challenges involved in initiating, shaping and maintaining such networks require new strategic reconsideration in the family itself and an extension of the existing theoretical observations regarding family businesses, thereby establishing the basis for a better understanding of large-scale business families. For this, we try to combine family business research, organization studies and systems theory.