The Organizational Form of Family Business [Paperback]

The Organizational Form of Family Business attempts to develop an evolutionary family business theory, positioning family businesses as a distinct organizational form (based on conjectures from organizational ecology). An open and uninhibited playing field - achieved through utilizing a grounded theory methodology - heightens chances for observing precisely how family businesses behave.
An introductory chapter is followed by a literature review, beginning with a review of family business research. This is followed by a discussion of family business definitional issues, and accompanied by some data to show the economic importance of family business.
There follows a review of the research literature on grounded theory, its developments, and its epistemological and ontological assumptions in the light of contemporary philosophy of science. A literature review and historical outline of organizational ecology including the theoretical achievements is provided. Also, the comparison with the other main organizational theories, justifying the theory selection, is offered.1. Introduction.- 1.1 Family Business.- 1.2 Grounded Theory.- 1.3 Organizational Ecology.- 1.4 The General Scope of this Research.- 1.5 Outlook.- 2. Literature Review.- 2.1 Family Business.- 2.1.1 Definitional issues.- 2.1.2 Statistics.- 2.1.3 Succession.- 2.1.4 International family business research.- 2.1.5 Entrepreneurship links.- 2.1.6 Strategy.- 2.1.7 Organizational behavior.- 2.1.8 Questions unanswered.- 2.2 Grounded Theory.- 2.2.1 Basic considerations.- 2.2.2 Some thoughts on the qualitative/quantitative dichotomy.- 2.2.3 Grounded theory in contrast to other methodological approaches.- 2.2.3.1 The inherent characteristics of qualitative research.- 2.2.3.2 The benefits of grounded theory.- 2.2.3.3 Triangulation.- 2.2.3.4 The use of cases and case studies.- 2.2.4 The hard core vs. the periphery.- 2.2.5 Some more philosophy of science.- 2.2.5.lC'