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The family business succession planning literature routinely assumes two main motives on the part of incumbents: family business continuity across generations and family harmony. The cross-tabulation of these motives produces [...]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2010.01340.x Byline: Michael Gilding (a) Keywords: Family; families; personal life; reflexivity; deinstitutionalization; individualization Abstract: Abstract There is a new orthodoxy in the field that was once understood as the sociology of the family, and is increasingly understood as the sociology of 'personal life', 'intimacy', 'relationships' and 'families'. The orthodoxy highlights the open-endedness of intimate relations at the expense of the family as an institution; that is, reflexivity over and above convention. This article argues that the new orthodoxy not only overstates reflexivity at the expense of convention, but abdicates understanding to frameworks grounded in biologistic and economistic understandings of human behaviour. The article makes its point through attention to three areas of research at odds with the new orthodoxy: paternity uncertainty, inheritance and family business. It then proposes that conceptualization of the family as an institutional regime gives due weight to the reflexive reconfiguration of family relationships and practices on the one hand, and their institutional embeddedness on the other. Author Affiliation: (a)Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology Article History: (Date Accepted: August 2010) Article note: email: mgilding@swin.edu.au

Since the managerial thesis (notably Berle and Means' classic study), the role of the family in capitalist enterprise and organization has often been viewed as an anachronism, the remnant of an earlier era. This article uses qualitative interviews with wealthy Australians to argue that family relationships are an enduring influence in relation to accumulation, succession and inheritance. There are two reasons. First, the decline of family control in big business is not just a historical event, but also an ongoing event that informs the passage of most entrepreneurial businesses as they grow in scale and complexity; hence the enduring influence of nepotism in large companies such as News Corporation. Second, a variety of considerations--including dynastic ambitions, tax minimization and trust--encourage family members to cooperate in the management of inheritance through family business institutions, from family holding companies to family offices. These family business institutions possibly reflect the rise of 'network forms of organization' grounded in personal trust, at the expense of large companies. Keywords: accumulation, capitalism, family, family office, inheritance, management succession, wealth, Each year the business magazine Business Review Weekly (BRW) compiles a list of the 'Rich 200' in Australia. As far as possible, this is a list of the richest 200 [...]

Modern Families: an Australian text S. SARANTAKOS, 1996 South Melbourne, Macmillan Education Australia hb AU$79.95, pb AU$39.95 Since the 1970s there has been a steady stream of edited readings on [...]

The renewed attention to family business in western societies is usually attributed to a past lack of attention to the subject because of its private character and to the resurgence [...]

THE SECRET LIFE OF MONEY: EXPOSING THE PRIVATE PARTS OF PERSONAL MONEY Valerie Wilson Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1999, xvi, 224 pp., $19.95 (paperback). Money, Valerie Wilson points out, has [...]

Australian Social Attitudes: The First Report. Sydney: UNSW Press. 2005. ISBN 0808406716. $59.95 Shaun Wilson, Gabrielle Meager, Rachel Gibson, David Denemark and Mark Western eds. Australian Social Attitudes: The First […]