Law Commons^™

Non-Market Values In Family Businesses, Benjamin Means

Faculty Publications

Despite the economic importance of family businesses, legal scholarship has often overlooked their distinctive character. Instead, scholars focus on the chosen form of business organization — partnership, corporation, LLC — and assume that the participants are economically rational actors who seek to maximize their individual preferences. This Article contends that family businesses are an extension of family relationships and that non-market values affect their goals and governance choices.

Just as family law scholars have shown that contract principles can be applied to regulate intimate relationships, corporate law scholars should recognize that the intimacy of family life often substitutes for arms-length …