The Transitional Nature of the Multifamily Business

Family firms are heterogeneous and often transitioning. To advance our understanding of how and why family firms change, we draw upon and extend the work of Pieper, Smith, Kudlats, and Astrachan by more closely considering the nature of the multifamily business, which is the focal type of organization in their study. Specifically, we explore how initial founding conditions and ongoing organizational and environmental factors may influence the formation, sustainability, and dissolution of the multifamily business, relative to single-family firms or other organizational forms. We argue that multifamily forms may be more common than generally believed, but tend to be a transitory organizational form.