This book offers a 'contemporary' understanding of families in business and serves as a springboard for ongoing evolution of families, their composition, transformations, and activities. The first chapter in this volume highlights the different approaches to family and concludes that identifying and understanding the entity 'family in business' is the cornerstone to understanding behaviours of family businesses. The concept of 'family in business' as a socially constructed entity allows for not only a broader scope of the concept to include individuals who share a faith (chapter 2), but also multi- generational families and chosen families. Narratives, or stories, are means for families in business to mark the boundary of the family in business (chapter 3), because not all members of the family are necessarily members of the family in business. Families and their businesses influence each other (chapter 4) and engender the family influence on the firm ('familiness') and firm influence of the family ('enterpriseness'). The last two chapters are dedicated to transgenerational family businesses, with a focus on learning between generations-chapter 5 highlights the importance of unlearning (to learn new knowledge and different ways of conducting business) and the final chapter focuses on what knowledge is actually transferred relative to initial plans. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Entrepreneurship & Regional Development.

This handbook is the definitive source of research on the differences among family firms. It provides a timely and thorough investigation of the variant strategies and behaviors undertaken by family firms today, taking a closer look at different configurations of family involvement and how they influence outcomes and success. While studies on differences between family and non-family firms are deeply rooted in the literature, this handbook uniquely examines the family firm heterogeneity research to date and the inner firm governance, financial and non-financial objectives, and strategies such as innovation, competitive dynamics, internationalization, and human resources management. The handbook pulls together the work of the most prominent names in family business from around the world, separating itself from the competition both in content and geographical scope. Future research directions provided in each chapter will spark further interdisciplinary scholarly work, and will be enlightening for researchers, educators, and practitioners who are currently limited to the narrow and exclusive literature and advance the burgeoning research on this important topic.

This handbook is the definitive source of research on the differences among family firms. It provides a timely and thorough investigation of the variant strategies and behaviors undertaken by family firms today, taking a closer look at different configurations of family involvement and how they influence outcomes and success. While studies on differences between family and non-family firms are deeply rooted in the literature, this handbook uniquely examines the family firm heterogeneity research to date and the inner firm governance, financial and non-financial objectives, and strategies such as innovation, competitive dynamics, internationalization, and human resources management. The handbook pulls together the work of the most prominent names in family business from around the world, separating itself from the competition both in content and geographical scope. Future research directions provided in each chapter will spark further interdisciplinary scholarly work, and will be enlightening for researchers, educators, and practitioners who are currently limited to the narrow and exclusive literature and advance the burgeoning research on this important topic.