May, 2005 237 Family firms are unique organizational forms as a result of the interactions between family members, the family, and the business. Distinctive familiness has been used as a notion to encompass these interactions and the consequent systemic synergies that could lead to competitive advantages. This introduction discusses the notion and reviews the papers and commentaries in this special issue within the context of their contributions to our under- standing of the possible sources and consequences of distinctive familiness. Introduction Early 20th-century management thinking was greatly influenced by powerful voices suggesting the optimality of professional management. For example, Alfred Chandler advocated managerial capitalism—wherein salaried managers with little or no equity in a firm make most of the decisions regarding the production of goods and services—as the most effective means of organizing a firm. Similarly, Max Weber recommends that managers should be separated from ownership and the means of the production. Clearly many firms (especially within the U.S. and the U.K.) are organized according to these principles, but the resurgence of discussions in the agency literature about problems arising from the separation of ownership and management have brought these earlier convictions into question. In fact, firms that are family owned and managed continue to dominate the economic landscape throughout the world (La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, & Shleifer, 1999; Shanker & Astrachan, 1996) and recent research suggests that many of these firms outperform their nonfamily counterparts (Anderson, Mansi, & Reeb, 2003; Miller & Le Breton-Miller, 2005; Villalonga & Amit, 2004). That family firms are unique as a result of the involvement of the family through ownership, governance, management, and vision is a basic premise of family business researchers; that these firms behave and, consequently, perform differently is the reason for research; explaining how and why they behave and perform differently is the objec- P T E & Sources and Consequences of Distinctive Familiness: An Introduction James J. Chrisman Jess H. Chua Lloyd Steier 1042-2587 Copyright 2005 by Baylor University Please send all correspondence to: James J. Chrisman at jchrisman@cobilan.msstate.edu, to Jess H. Chua at chua@mgmt.ucalgary.ca, and to Lloyd Steier at lloyd.steier@ualberta.ca.