Are Family Firms Born or Made? An Exploratory Investigation
利用美国小企业发展中心调查数据，研究企业是创立时即为家族企业还是后期演变而来，发现多数家族企业天生如此，但也有相当比例随时间转化，且家族参与度随年龄增长先升后降。
Do businesses tend to be born as family firms or do they become family firms at a later stage in their development? The question has important implications for family business studies. In this article we examine this question using data extracted from survey responses of small business clients of the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) program in the United States. The results suggest that most family firms are born that way but that a significant number of firms do arrive there through time. The relationship between age and family involvement appears to be concave—the rate of increase in family involvement slows as family firms become older and at some point family involvement may even decline.