Unleashing the Relationship Power of Family Firms: Identity Confirmation as a Catalyst for Performance

This paper adopts a broad perspective on identity and identity relations and argues that family businesses can develop identity confirmation as a unique, hard to imitate competitive resource that unleashes and leverages the relational capabilities that differentiate them from nonfamily businesses. A person's identities are "confirmed" in a business, to the extent they are supported therein. Identity and identity confirmation research is marshaled to consider the impact of identity confirmation on succession. Implications for other relational challenges family businesses face are explored. The potential for family business research to contribute to a general theory of the firm is illustrated.