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Prior family business research has been dominated by an agency theory perspective, narrow definitions of what constitutes family wealth, and a preoccupation with business governance mechanisms to the exclusion of family governance mechanisms. This chapter presents the findings of examining the role of a broader range of governance mechanisms (for the business; for the family) in achieving more comprehensive wealth (economic and non-economic) family business goals in the Australian context. Based on survey responses from around 400 family businesses, the findings from this study show that both family and business governance mechanisms contribute significantly to achieving both the business’s financial performance and the achievement of family-centered goals that are important to the owning family. The results also suggest that the relationship between governance and performance in the family business context is much more complex than that acknowledged in prior research and has implications for both future research and practice.

In recent years, the corporate governance structures of family businesses have become increasingly important to the public. This is due not only to the increasing number of corporate successions but also to the (still) lower degree of formalization of corporate governance in family-owned companies. In this chapter, the authors analyze theoretical and empirical findings on family governance with a focus on family constitution and present the results of their own exploratory empirical survey conducted in 2017.