A significant amount of research has been done to understand the type of business decisions and managerial processes that differentiate family businesses from other enterprises. On this last finding is where a UConn family business researcher has recently focused. Karen File, Associate Professor of Marketing at UConn's Stamford branch, recently completed a study that was designed to determine which business decisions seemed to trigger family involvement and which were processed with little or no family intervention. Dr. File developed a list of 34 procurement decisions common to many different types of companies. She surveyed 396 family businesses.
Some decisions are important to the business and are likely to trigger family involvement.
These tend to be decisions that have an effect on the finances of the business and on the fortunes of the family that owns it. These include decisions to purchase benefits consulting, deferred compensation planning, and retirement planning services. Included in a second group are current strategic financial allocation decisions, including purchases of capital equipment and banking services. A third group encompasses those decisions that might have both short and long-run impact on the direction of the firm, like management consulting services and management training services. The last group in this category housed decisions that affect how the public views the family firm.