Reflections on family firm goals and the assessment of performance

Assessments of family firm effectiveness depend critically on how goals and performance outputs are measured. Similarly, assessments of family firm efficiency depend critically on how performance outputs and resource inputs are measured. We illustrate this by showing that the assessment of performance is affected by how different family firm goal systems are specified. Gaining a better understanding of these fundamental concepts gives family business scholars the rare opportunity to set the rules of the game about how the performance of family firms, and other organizations that pursue the non-financial goals of a dominant stakeholder, should be assessed.