The economic landscape of most nations remains dominated by family firms (Heck & Stafford, 2001; Klein, 2000; Morck & Yeung, 2003; Shanker & Astrachan, 1996). Therefore, it is fitting that academia has begun to recognize the importance of family business studies. The field has gathered considerable momentum, particularly in the last several years. Studies of founders (e.g., Kelly, Athanassiou, & Crittenden, 2000; Kenyon-Rouvinez, 2001; Sorenson, 2000), members of the next-generation (e.g., Eckrich & Loughead, 1996; Goldberg, 1996; Sharma & Irving, 2002; Stavrou, 1998), women (e.g., Cole, 1997; Dumas, 1998; Fitzgerald & Muske, 2002; Poza & Messer, 2001), and non-family managers (e.g., Mitchell, Morse, & Sharma, 2003) have increased our understanding of key individual stakeholders. Studies at the group level have added to our knowledge on two of the most pervasive problems in family businesses: conflict (e.g., Boles, 1996; Drozdow, 1998; Habbershon & Astrachan, 1996; Kaye, 1996; Kellermanns & Eddleston, 2002; Sorenson, 1999) and succession (e.g., Cadieux, Lorrain, & Hugron, 2002; Davis & Harveston, 1998; Harveston, Davis, & Lynden, 1997; Miller, Steier, & LeBreton-Miller, 2003; Morris, Williams, Allen, & Avila, 1997). Still other studies have broadened our horizons beyond the United States by providing perspective of the family business situation in Asia (Pistrui, Huang, Oksoy, Jing, & Welsch, 2001; Sharma & Rao, 2000) Europe (Corbetta, 1995; Gallo, 1995; Klein, 2002; Welsch, Gerald, & Hoy, 1995), and South America (Curimbaba, 2002).

Recently, the idea that the family is the critical variable in family firm studies and that the heart of the field is about understanding the reciprocal impact of family on business and business on family has begun to crystallize in the minds of many scholars (e.g., Astrachan, 2003; Dyer, 2003; Habbershon, Williams, & MacMillan, 2003; Rogoff & Heck, 2003; Zahra, 2003). Broad based models of sustainable family businesses that take into account the reciprocal relationships between family and business systems in an effort to foster the simultaneous development of functional families and profitable firms have emerged (Stafford, Duncan, Danes, & Winter, 1999). Other scholars have encouraged the adoption of a “family embeddedness perspective” by including the characteristics of family systems in research studies (Aldrich & Cliff, 2003). Recognizing that the family and business are intertwined in family firms, some researchers define the performance of family firms along both family and business dimensions (Mitchell et al., 2003). Some studies even suggest that the success of family firms depends more on effective management of the overlap between family and business than on resources or processes in either the family or the business systems (Olson, Zuiker, Danes, Stafford, Heck, & Duncan, 2003).