The parallels of family business research and cooperative studies

The theme of the 2014 Annual Conference of the International family research academy (IFERA) was Co-operation within and amongst family businesses. This short communication reveals that there are similarities between the questions and theories of both family business research and cooperative research. Reasons behind this might be that same scholars are interested in both subjects. However, cooperation between family firms and studying it was by no means a matter of course for the conference attendees. Especially novel seemed to be collaboration using a cooperative model. Both research fields have to learn from each another and act as mirrors to the other. Especially, psychological ownership is an important study subject for both family business research and cooperative research. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.