Understanding and Fostering Family Purpose

With each new generation, an opportunity arises to reflect on, confirm, and transmit a family’s beliefs about its responsibility to others, or its purpose. Although it may well be the case that all families benefit by more intentionally focusing on their collective purpose, doing so may be particularly important for families who earn and inherit significant wealth. The goal of this study is to advance our understanding of how family purposes develop and how one can promote them, especially among families with extraordinary responsibilities.

Principal Investigator: Dr. Kendall Cotton Bronk
Co-PI: Tarek el Sehity
Team Members: Heinrich Liechtenstein, IESE; Anne Colby, Stanford University; William Damon, Stanford University; Caleb Mitchell, CGU; Ximena Giesemann, CGU; Elyse Postlewaite, CGU
Funder: Templeton Foundation

To learn more, click here to read a brief article we published in the Family Firm Institute’s Practitioner online magazine.