Designing the Family Office: A Teaching Case on Governance Before Wealth Management

Q: What does this research mean for the field?

Designing a family office is fundamentally a governance structuring challenge that must prioritize family needs and decision-making rights before the selection of wealth management products. Novelty: ClaimNovelty.METHODOLOGICAL. Consensus alignment: ConsensusAlignment.NEUTRAL.

HyoJung Kang; JeHyun Bae

doi:10.17287/kbr.2026.30.3.75

August 31, 2026Korea Business Review

Designing the Family Office: A Teaching Case on Governance Before Wealth Management

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Key Points

To examine family office design as a primary governance architecture challenge rather than merely an asset allocation problem, situated within the institutional context of Korean family business succession and regulatory reform.
Structured qualitative teaching case analysis centered on a second-generation Chief Financial Officer navigating substantial liquidity after a partial equity sale.
Integration of agency theory, stewardship theory, socioemotional wealth, and boundary organization theory across four operational structures: advisory-centric lightweight, internal single family office, institutional multi-family office, and phased hybrid models.
Comparative evaluation across eight strategic criteria: governance clarity, stewardship alignment, agency risk control, confidentiality, competency fit, scalability, cost control, and speed to launch.
Demonstrates that family office structuring requires establishing clear decision rights, succession protocols, and agency conflict mitigations prior to selecting external financial products or service providers.
Provides an eight-dimension scoring matrix and a 12-month implementation roadmap balancing family socioemotional wealth preservation against institutional regulatory shifts such as corporate governance amendments.

Implication

Case analysis reveals structured governance frameworks optimize family office model selection under institutional transitions, highlighting governance priority over asset allocation.

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Cite This Study

Kang et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a993635636c6408cfa7f2cf https://doi.org/10.17287/kbr.2026.30.3.75

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Designing the Family Office: A Teaching Case on Governance Before Wealth Management

Key Points

Implication

Abstract

Discussion

Cite This Study

Designing the Family Office: A Teaching Case on Governance Before Wealth Management

Key Points

Implication

Abstract

Discussion

Cite This Study

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