Volume 1 · Issue 2 · 2026
Authority, succession and financial agency. Research that asks who gets to decide—and whose knowledge is heard.
A note to the reader
Read original research alongside separately attributed practical companions. Source findings and proposed practices are different kinds of evidence; every article retains its original attribution and publication date.
Contents
1–12 of 25 articles
Succession, legitimacy & leadership · Research source
Kathy K. Overbeke; Diana Bilimoria; Toni Somers
Frontiers in Psychology · 2015-05-29 · CC BY 4.0
Evidence for inclusive family ownership, leadership development and governance. Transfer to family-office practice is explicitly evaluated in its original practical companion.
Succession, legitimacy & leadership · Research source
Manuel Feldmann; Martin Lukes; Lorraine Uhlaner
Small Business Economics · 2020-11-21 · CC BY 4.0
Evidence for inclusive family ownership, leadership development and governance. Transfer to family-office practice is explicitly evaluated in its original practical companion.
Succession, legitimacy & leadership · Research source
Angel L. Meroño-Cerdán
Journal of Family and Economic Issues · 2022-03-05 · CC BY 4.0
Evidence for inclusive family ownership, leadership development and governance. Transfer to family-office practice is explicitly evaluated in its original practical companion.
Succession, legitimacy & leadership · Research source
Kyriakos Lingas
Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship · 2013-05-21 · CC BY 2.0
Evidence for inclusive family ownership, leadership development and governance. Transfer to family-office practice is explicitly evaluated in its original practical companion.
Succession, legitimacy & leadership · Research source
Lisa K. Gundry; Jill R. Kickul; Tatiana Iakovleva; Alan L. Carsrud
Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship · 2014-03-26 · CC BY 2.0
Evidence for inclusive family ownership, leadership development and governance. Transfer to family-office practice is explicitly evaluated in its original practical companion.
Succession, legitimacy & leadership · Research source
Huiping Xian; Nan Jiang; Maura McAdam
International Small Business Journal · 2020-10-08 · CC BY 4.0
Evidence for inclusive family ownership, leadership development and governance. Transfer to family-office practice is explicitly evaluated in its original practical companion.
Board authority & accountable ownership · Research source
Ana Beatriz Hernández-Lara; Juan Pablo Gonzales-Bustos; Amado Alarcón-Alarcón
Sustainability · 2021-02-12 · CC BY 4.0
Evidence for inclusive family ownership, leadership development and governance. Transfer to family-office practice is explicitly evaluated in its original practical companion.
Board authority & accountable ownership · Research source
Emma García-Meca; Domingo J. Santana-Martín
Review of Managerial Science · 2022-07-11 · CC BY 4.0
A family office can appoint women to its investment or operating-company board while leaving the actual distribution of authority untouched. This companion proposes an audit of that gap. García-Meca and Santana-Martín examine 1,134 firm-year observations of Spanish listed family firms during 2003–2020 and distinguish family from non-family women directors. Their results are conditional on affiliation and board composition. The study does not establish a universal number of women that guarantees investment performance, nor does it show that a particular woman is less competent because she belongs to the family. The practical question is whether governance arrangements permit each director to exercise independent judgment.
Board authority & accountable ownership · Research source
Maximiliano González; Alexander Guzmán; Eduardo Pablo; María Andrea Trujillo
Review of Managerial Science · 2018-07-10 · CC BY 4.0
Families often compare the readiness of potential successors after providing them with unequal access to operating experience, financial training and influential sponsors. González, Guzmán, Pablo and Trujillo study 523 closely held Colombian family firms. Their distinction between family and outside women directors cautions against treating gender as a sufficient explanation of performance. Their exploratory human-capital analysis covers only a limited, nonrepresentative subset of directors. It motivates investigation of development opportunities; it does not justify a presumption that daughters or other women heirs are unprepared. This companion proposes a fair preparation process before allocating fiduciary responsibility.
Board authority & accountable ownership · Research source
Jan Luca Pletzer; Romina Nikolova; Karina Karolina Kedzior; Sven Constantin Voelpel
PLOS ONE · 2015-06-18 · CC BY 4.0
A family office can support fair access to leadership without promising that every increase in women's representation automatically raises investment returns. Pletzer, Nikolova, Kedzior and Voelpel synthesize twenty studies involving 3,097 companies and report a small, statistically nonsignificant overall association between female board representation and financial performance. The result is not evidence that women lack leadership value. It demonstrates the limits of a simple headcount-to-performance story. This companion proposes a board evidence standard that keeps the ethical rationale for fair opportunity distinct from empirical claims about organizational outcomes.
Board authority & accountable ownership · Research source
Pattanaporn Chatjuthamard; Pornsit Jiraporn; Sang Mook Lee
PLOS ONE · 2021-10-11 · CC BY 4.0
Adding women to a board is not equivalent to reducing every form of corporate risk. Chatjuthamard, Jiraporn and Lee examine board diversity and executive option incentives, finding that greater diversity is associated with stronger sensitivity of executive wealth to volatility. Their analysis uses observational corporate data and several robustness methods. Its theoretical interpretation should not become a rule that individual women are inherently cautious. For family offices overseeing operating companies, the useful implication is to inspect compensation and risk together. This companion proposes a review of incentives that could undermine an otherwise careful investment mandate.
Access to private capital · Research source
Kevin Koziol; Maja Schmitz; Suleika Bort
Small Business Economics · 2025-01-16 · CC BY 4.0
Private-capital access & evidence for women’s leadership in family wealth and private capital; source findings remain specific to their study population.