Family Lives in Motion: Toward a Life Course Process Theory of Ownership Transfer in Business-Owning Families

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.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/08944865251361198
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School > Aston India Centre for Applied Research
College of Business and Social Sciences
Aston University (General)
Additional Information: 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).
Last Modified: 06 Aug 2025 07:40
Date Deposited: 04 Aug 2025 13:37
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://journal ... 944865251361198 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2025-08-01
Accepted Date: 2025-07-03
Authors: Lanz, Susan
Burke, Gary
Haag, Kajsa
Omidvar, Omid

Download

[img]

Version: Published Version

License: Creative Commons Attribution


Export / Share Citation


Statistics

Additional statistics for this record