Key Issues in Family Councils: Insights from the Spanish Experience

As successful families in business grow in family size and number of shareholders, they commonly develop a particular kind of family organization, often referred to as the family council. This family organization usually becomes the family's central governing body. Although family councils are very common among highly complex multigenerational family-owned businesses, implementing them appears to be a challenging task, as each family has its own idea and this idea is likely to evolve over time. With the aim of helping families in business reflect upon or review their family governance system, the present study aims at learning from the experience of 16 Spanish family-owned businesses by analyzing different areas of interest such as the different types of family councils, their key features, the reasons for starting a family council, the objectives of creating a family council, the stages of a family council and the characteristics of other governance structures connected to the family council. Investigating these issues can help multigenerational family-owned businesses to succeed as well-structured organizations that keep the family connected and committed towards a common mission, vision and values. Limitations and future research are also discussed.