A single family office (SFO) is an organizational entity owned by a single family and primarily dedicated to managing assets and meeting the needs of family members. While a rising number of SFOs around the world emphasize the importance of this specific vehicle for entrepreneurial families, scholarly knowledge on SFOs is surprisingly scarce. To better understand this phenomenon, we conducted and analyzed exploratory interviews with 109 German-speaking SFO-owning families. We answer a call for research on SFO heterogeneity by identifying two relevant, separate dimensions: a) whether the family still owns the original family firm and b) whether the family generation who founded the SFO still owns the SFO. Based on our qualitative insights and theoretical approaches such as socioemotional wealth (SEW) and agency theory, we develop propositions about how the respective heterogeneity of SFOs affects the family-related goals, entrepreneurial investment behaviors, and governance of SFOs.

单一家族办公室 (SFO) 是一个由单一家族拥有的组织实体，主要致力于管理资产和满足家族成员的需求。虽然全球越来越多的 SFO 强调这种特定工具对创业家族的重要性，但关于 SFO 的学术知识却出奇地稀缺。为了更好地理解这一现象，我们对 109 个讲德语的 SFO 拥有者家庭进行了探索性访谈并进行了分析。我们通过确定两个相关的独立维度来响应对 SFO 异质性研究的呼吁：a) 家族是否仍拥有原来的家族企业，以及 b) 创立 SFO 的家族一代是否仍拥有 SFO。基于我们的定性见解和理论方法，例如社会情感财富 (SEW) 和代理理论，