Until the early 1980s, serious academic research on family businesses was sparse, to say the least. The scholarship that did exist was primarily based on anecdotal evidence, and mostly biased toward the negative effects of family involvement, particularly in terms of nepotism and family feuds undermining a firm's performance and familial relationships. Considered at best an example for how not to manage a business, family business was deemed not worthy of scientific attention. This has changed dramatically over the past three decades and this new Routledge Major Works collection provides users with background knowledge about the foundations of family-business theory and research, as well as a sense of its theoretical and empirical variety. Edited and with a new introduction by a team of leading scholars, the four volumes assemble the very best and most influential works in family business to provide an authoritative research resource.