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. Included here were advertising agency selection as well as the specific services offered by the agency.
Some decisions are important to the business but evoke little or no family involvement.
A common denominator in this category may be the technical complexity of the decision. The CEOs of the family businesses surveyed in this study report that the family does not wield influence in decisions such as those concerning property insurance, accounting services, corporate legal services, software procurement, the selection of computer equipment, local area network evaluation, security services or telephone equipment leases or purchases. There are a few purchasing decisions which family business CEOs rate relatively low in importance to the business but which do incite family involvement. They include key employee insurance, buy-sell agreements, and corporate philanthropy. Like advertising, corporate philanthropy creates high visibility, reflects on individuals in the family and is considered to bean extension of the family's philosophy.