Key Takeaways
- • Columbia Business School's Global Family Enterprise Program argues family offices should be understood as governance structures shaping family futures, not only as administrative or investment vehicles.
- • A PRISMA systematic review (Siaba, Rivera, and Currais, 2026, European Research on Management and Business Economics, vol. 32) covered 60 peer-reviewed studies from 1980 to 2024, of which only 16 are empirical.
- • The review finds family office structure and behavior depend heavily on family priorities, generational stage, and whether the original business is still owned, challenging universal best-practice templates.
- • Columbia is launching a research initiative using confidential interviews with principals and chief investment officers, plus a complementary survey on investment strategy and structure, to study how single family offices make decisions from the inside.
- • The article frames the central practitioner question as what kind of organization a family needs to steward financial capital, judgment, relationships, and continuity over time.
Summary
A Columbia Business School article argues that the family office should be examined as a governance structure as well as an investment or administrative vehicle. Drawing on agency theory, stewardship, and socio-emotional wealth, the authors contend that family offices must be assessed on trust, responsibility, family cohesion, and legacy protection, not only on efficiency and returns. In this framing, governance concerns who decides, how control is shared, and how a family's values are carried forward, and the most difficult family office decisions are rarely purely financial.
The review challenges universal best practices. According to the article, the choice among single family office, multi-family office, virtual, embedded, and in-house models has consequences for control, privacy, professionalization, transparency, and transmission of legacy. The review finds that later-generation single family offices emphasize family-related goals and governance mechanisms, while first-generation offices invest more in entrepreneurial activity, particularly direct entrepreneurial investments. Offices linked to families that still own the original business tend to prioritize asset preservation, non-financial goals, and transgenerational control more strongly than those created after a sale.
The article also highlights the limited evidence base. Of the 60 studies reviewed, only 16 are empirical, and large multi-family offices are more visible in the research than private single family offices, which are often hardest to access. The authors call for deeper qualitative and empirical work, including confidential access and case-based inquiry. The article notes that much of the field still describes family offices from the outside, by services, asset classes, or model, with far less known about decision-making, role coordination, and how offices balance financial, relational, and legacy goals.
Columbia's Global Family Enterprise Program is launching a research initiative to address this gap, studying the family office as an organization in its own right through governance, people, decisions, and relationships with advisors and markets. The project will rely on confidential interviews with principals, chief investment officers, and leaders across functions, alongside a survey on investment strategy and structure. The article closes with a call to families and advisors to reassess what their office is doing, and invites practitioners who work with family offices to contribute their experience to the research.
The review challenges universal best practices. According to the article, the choice among single family office, multi-family office, virtual, embedded, and in-house models has consequences for control, privacy, professionalization, transparency, and transmission of legacy. The review finds that later-generation single family offices emphasize family-related goals and governance mechanisms, while first-generation offices invest more in entrepreneurial activity, particularly direct entrepreneurial investments. Offices linked to families that still own the original business tend to prioritize asset preservation, non-financial goals, and transgenerational control more strongly than those created after a sale.
The article also highlights the limited evidence base. Of the 60 studies reviewed, only 16 are empirical, and large multi-family offices are more visible in the research than private single family offices, which are often hardest to access. The authors call for deeper qualitative and empirical work, including confidential access and case-based inquiry. The article notes that much of the field still describes family offices from the outside, by services, asset classes, or model, with far less known about decision-making, role coordination, and how offices balance financial, relational, and legacy goals.
Columbia's Global Family Enterprise Program is launching a research initiative to address this gap, studying the family office as an organization in its own right through governance, people, decisions, and relationships with advisors and markets. The project will rely on confidential interviews with principals, chief investment officers, and leaders across functions, alongside a survey on investment strategy and structure. The article closes with a call to families and advisors to reassess what their office is doing, and invites practitioners who work with family offices to contribute their experience to the research.
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