Abstract
Despite the importance of family ownership in family business, limited attention has been given to the interplay between evolving family contexts, unpredictable life courses, and ownership transfer choices. Based on a study of ownership transfer narratives of 27 members of business families, we investigate how shifts in family life precipitate different types of intrafamily ownership transfers. Drawing on life course theory, we find that changing family lives and events precipitate three types of ownership transfers: symbolic, protectionist, and rebalancing. We advance a theoretical framework which contributes more nuanced insights into processual and temporal aspects of ownership transfer embedded in family dynamics.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 210-238 |
| Number of pages | 29 |
| Journal | Family Business Review |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Early online date | 1 Aug 2025 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Sept 2025 |
Bibliographical note
Copyright © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).Keywords
- intrafamily ownership transfer
- family embeddedness
- life course theory
- narrative inquiry