Private family business goals: A concise review, goal relationships, and goal formation processes

Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that goals drive behavior and measured goals lead to results. The preeminent goals in business research revolve around financial performance. However, recently, more attention has been paid to non-financial goals, such as applied in the balanced scorecard. Family business research has also taken special note of goals, as family influence in business typically enhances the salience of non-financial goals that must be accommodated with more materialistic, financial objectives. For this and other reasons, goals are challenging to study in private family firms where goals reflect desired outcomes for family and business, and relative to publicly traded entities, owning-families have great freedom in goal selection, resulting in higher levels of goal idiosyncrasy and heterogeneity. To further the discussion of private family business goals, this chapter provides a concise review of the extant literature on family business goals, imparts relationships between financial and non-financial goals, and expounds processes of family business goal formation.