Unpacking the Black Box of Family Business Advising: Insights From Psychology

Academic research on family business advising is gaining momentum; however, the internal structure and mechanisms of advice giving and taking remain a black box. We conducted a systematic review that integrates findings from family business advising with those from psychology. Advising research in psychology has focused on understanding the subjective constructs and theoretical concepts composing the internal structures of advising. We develop an input-process-output framework to categorize and integrate both streams of literature on advising, introduce new concepts and variables from psychology that inform family firm advising, and identify important gaps to delineate avenues for future family firm research.