Using National Family Business Panel data combined with national natural disaster and federal disaster assistance data, the purpose of the study was to investigate relative contributions of human, social and financial capital; natural disaster exposure; and federal disaster assistance to business-owning family resilience over time for male and female family business owners. With a theoretical foundation of Sustainable Family Business and Conservation of Resources theories, the study examined 311 small family firms from the National Family Business Panel. Federal disaster assistance explained a significant amount of variance in firm-owning resilience. Higher levels of federal disaster assistance were associated with lower family firm resilience for male-owned businesses and higher family firm resilience for female-owned businesses. This study advances knowledge of firm sustainability after natural disasters by adding to the conceptualization and measurement of family firm resilience; by having baseline firm financial data prior to disaster exposure; by utilizing a national, representative, longitudinal family firm sample; by including a range of natural disasters and federal disaster assistance; and by including family resilience over time.

The purpose was to present a family capital typology based on Sustainable Family Business Theory II and to document its relative contribution to short-term firm achievements and long-term sustainability using National Family Business Survey panel data. Family capital was defined as total owning-family resources composed of human, social, and financial capital. Family capital significantly contributed to firm achievements and sustainability. In the short term, all family capital types explained 13.5% of gross revenue variance and 4% of owner’s success perception variance. In the long term, all family capital types explained 26.7% of gross revenue variance and 11.6% of owner’s success perception variance.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among business tensions, relationship conflict quality, and satisfaction with spouse for 206 farm business-owning couples. The Sustainable Family Business Model and the Family FIRO (Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation) model guided the path analysis. For both husbands and wives, locus of control was negatively related to business tensions; decision involvement discrepancy was positively related to relationship conflict quality; and business tensions were negatively related to relationship conflict quality. For husbands, relationship conflict quality was positively related to satisfaction with spouse; for wives, business tensions were negatively related to satisfaction with business-owning spouse.