What Is a Business Family?

Abstract

Most businesses are argued to be family businesses, but this group of businesses is very heterogeneous. This is noticed in terms of differences in level of family in-volvement and influence in family businesses, and the F-PEC scale is a powerful tool when analysing such variations. However, all the families that are involved in these family businesses are also different. These families may be referred to as business families, but how do such families differ from each other? In order to be able to an-swer that question, one needs to start by defining a business family. During the search for such a definition, one will find that a business family may be positioned on a con-tinuous scale ranging from business influenced families to family business influencing families.