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Kennesaw State University

Measuring Family Business Performance: A Holistic, Idiosyncratic Approach

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

<p>For any type of organization, performance represents the measure of outcomes, goals, and aspirations vital to various organization stakeholders; thus performance is an important research variable (Seijts, Latham, Tasa, & Latham, 2004, Simon, 1964). Family businesses are different from non-family businesses in that the family subsystem and the business subsystem overlap and interact to form the family business system. The desired outcomes, goals, and aspirations of each family business are a product of its particular family and business sub-systems. Thus, in family business, especially privately owned entities, performance is of particular interest since families can set their goals in their own ways, which may go well beyond financial outcomes. Despite notable recent advances, especially on conceptual grounds, current approaches to measuring performance in family business are limited by a focus solely on financial measures, and current approaches fail to acknowledge that goals are idiosyncratic to each family business. The purpose of this research was to begin the process of developing a performance measurement scale that is holistic – including the entire set of family business goals, both financial and non-financial – and considers the idiosyncratic nature of family businesses. The present study produced a family business performance measurement scale that employs twenty-one goals spread among six latent constructs.</p> <p><strong><br /></strong></p>

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Management
Level thesis:degree_level
Dissertation
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Business Administration
Year dc:date.available
2015

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Williams, Ralph I, Jr
Contributors dc:contributor
  • Dr. Torsten M. Pieper
  • Dr. Joseph H. Astrachan

Subjects

dc:subject × 6

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Repository record dc:identifier
https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/dba_etd/13
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu:dba_etd-1013

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Kennesaw State University
Base URL
digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/do/oai/
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Williams, Ralph I, Jr. Measuring Family Business Performance: A Holistic, Idiosyncratic Approach. Dissertation thesis, 2015. https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/dba_etd/13