This article responds to the calls from the research field to find effective ways to distinguish between different categories of family firms. The authors contribute to this literature by extending and refining previous family firm typologies. To attain this objective, the authors introduce the professionalization construct as basis for distinguishing family firms. As this construct is often approached in an oversimplified, one-dimensional manner, they first conduct an exploratory factor analysis to reveal its multidimensional nature. Based on these results, drawn from a representative sample of 532 Belgian family businesses, a cluster analysis facilitates a distinction between different “types” of family firms based on a multidimensional conceptualization of firm professionalization.
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