The Organizational Form of Family Business

1. Introduction.- 1.1 Family Business.- 1.2 Grounded Theory.- 1.3 Organizational Ecology.- 1.4 The General Scope of this Research.- 1.5 Outlook.- 2. Literature Review.- 2.1 Family Business.- 2.1.1 Definitional issues.- 2.1.2 Statistics.- 2.1.3 Succession.- 2.1.4 International family business research.- 2.1.5 Entrepreneurship links.- 2.1.6 Strategy.- 2.1.7 Organizational behavior.- 2.1.8 Questions unanswered.- 2.2 Grounded Theory.- 2.2.1 Basic considerations.- 2.2.2 Some thoughts on the qualitative/quantitative dichotomy.- 2.2.3 Grounded theory in contrast to other methodological approaches.- 2.2.3.1 The inherent characteristics of qualitative research.- 2.2.3.2 The benefits of grounded theory.- 2.2.3.3 Triangulation.- 2.2.3.4 The use of cases and case studies.- 2.2.4 The hard core vs. the periphery.- 2.2.5 Some more philosophy of science.- 2.2.5.1 Sir Karl R. Popper.- 2.2.5.2 Thomas S. Kuhn.- 2.2.5.3 Paul K. Feyerabend.- 2.3 Organizational Ecology.- 2.3.1 Central themes.- 2.3.1.1 Adaptation and selection.- 2.3.1.2 Density dependence.- 2.3.1.3 Organizational foundings.- 2.3.1.4 Organizational mortality.- 2.3.1.5 Further categories of ecological research.- 2.3.2 Questions remaining.- 2.3.3 The fit of grounded theory and organizational ecology.- 2.4 The European Union.- 2.4.1 The institution and process of the European Union.- 2.4.2 Chronology of the Union.- 2.4.3 The history of the Union.- 2.4.4 The evolution of the European Union.- 2.4.5 The democratic foundations of the European Union.- 2.4.6 The single market in 1995.- 2.4.7 Small and medium-sized enterprises in the European Union.- 2.5 A Summary of Implications for this Research.- 3. Methodology.- 3.1 Formal Description.- 3.1.1 The procedure.- 3.1.2 The cases.- 3.2 Basic Grounded Theory Procedures.- 3.2.1 Theoretical sensitivity.- 3.2.2 The use of literature.- 3.2.3 Coding procedures in grounded theory.- 3.2.3.1 Open coding.- 3.2.3.2 Axial coding.- 3.2.3.3 Selective coding.- 3.3 The secondary data.- 3.3.1 The