The aim of this paper is to present considerations about the concept of family business, considering recent transformations in the structure of contemporary family. Most of the studies about family business were developed considering the patriarchal family as the panorama of investigation. Thus, the description on the performance of these enterprises follows the same distribution of power and status of the patriarchal family. However, cultural, economical and social transformations have led to a new demography, as well as to different family arrangements, which probably have affected the family enterprises. This theoretical essay approaches some of these transformations, pointing out the relationship between these transformations and the conception of family business. The analysis was structured based on the size of the family, the distance among generations and the power composition and distribution. Concluding, it emphasizes the necessity to give new dimension to the perception of family enterprise, including different contemporary family arrange.
family; family business; social transformations