Volume 1 · An expanding evidence collection

Research into practice.
Judgment into stewardship.

A disciplined reading path for families who govern capital. Each attributed research edition sits beside an original practical companion, with a separate passage agent for each work.

New research editions

103

New practical companions

103

Paired passage agents

206

A purposeful collection

Choose the decision
you need to improve.

Family-office research is complemented by relevant studies of family businesses, capital markets, property and financial decisions. Each article states the setting actually studied. An application to a family office is an editorial inference, not a claim that every original study sampled family offices.

The reading paths

Governance & succession

Authority, ownership, philanthropy and continuity across generations.

13

Governance & succession · CC BY 4.0

Earmarking donations to boost study participation? Evidence from a field experiment

Andreas Raff; Robert Böhm; Christoph Fuchs

PLOS ONE · 2025-09-08

Adjacent philanthropy research: randomized donation-incentive design for research participation, relevant to family-foundation evaluation and grantee engagement; no family offices studied.

Original practical companion

When donation choice does not improve participation: an earmarking decision protocol for family philanthropy

AI-assisted editorial analysis translating a preregistered null-result field experiment into a bounded protocol for family-foundation participation incentives. Separates donor choice, respondent completion and grant restrictions; proposes cost records, test definitions and explicit stopping conditions without claiming a tested family-office intervention.

14

Governance & succession · CC BY 4.0

Ownership succession, risk taking and debt financing from the perspective of the institutional environment

Yanbo Liu; Hanzhou Liu; Decai Tang; Chenxi Yin; Lin Kong

PLOS ONE · 2025-07-24

Adjacent research on listed Chinese family businesses, ownership succession and short-term bank financing; not directly studied family offices.

Original practical companion

Financing continuity during ownership succession: a debt and authority review for family offices

AI-assisted editorial analysis using a Chinese family-firm study to separate ownership transfer, financing demand, lender supply and short-term debt exposure. Proposed controls include authority mapping, maturity records and explicit stopping conditions; they are not evaluated family-office interventions.

15

Governance & succession · CC BY 4.0

How to observe business operations: An empirical study of family business

Tsu-Cheng Chou; Hsi-Peng Lu

PLOS ONE · 2022-04-21

Adjacent evidence for family-office governance or philanthropy; original study population and measures are described in the companion. No direct family-office sample is claimed.

Original practical companion

Observing succession without mistaking access for evidence: a family-office fieldwork protocol

AI-assisted editorial analysis translating the cited study into a bounded family-office decision protocol, with explicit evidence limits, responsible owners, records, measures and stopping conditions. Proposed practices have not been evaluated in a new study.

16

Governance & succession · CC BY 4.0

Investor attention and corporate social responsibility of family businesses in Vietnam: The moderating role of CEO overpower

Khoa Dang Duong; Hanh Thi Hong Nguyen; Phuc Huu Truong; Hoa Thanh Phan Le

PLOS ONE · 2024-07-19

Adjacent evidence for family-office governance or philanthropy; original study population and measures are described in the companion. No direct family-office sample is claimed.

Original practical companion

CEO authority and CSR disclosure: a governance review for family-controlled holdings

AI-assisted editorial analysis translating the cited study into a bounded family-office decision protocol, with explicit evidence limits, responsible owners, records, measures and stopping conditions. Proposed practices have not been evaluated in a new study.

17

Governance & succession · CC BY 4.0

The influence of non-family members in top management teams on research and development investment: Evidence from Chinese family firms

Yujia Shao; Dechun Huang; Lelin Lv; Jie Yu

PLOS ONE · 2021-10-08

Adjacent evidence for family-office governance or philanthropy; original study population and measures are described in the companion. No direct family-office sample is claimed.

Original practical companion

Giving non-family executives a real R&D mandate: a family-enterprise governance protocol

AI-assisted editorial analysis translating the cited study into a bounded family-office decision protocol, with explicit evidence limits, responsible owners, records, measures and stopping conditions. Proposed practices have not been evaluated in a new study.

18

Governance & succession · CC BY 4.0

Mental Imagery, Impact, and Affect: A Mediation Model for Charitable Giving

Stephan Dickert; Janet Kleber; Daniel Västfjäll; Paul Slovic

PLOS ONE · 2016-02-09

Adjacent evidence for family-office governance or philanthropy; original study population and measures are described in the companion. No direct family-office sample is claimed.

Original practical companion

Separate compelling stories from demonstrated impact: a philanthropy communication protocol

AI-assisted editorial analysis translating the cited study into a bounded family-office decision protocol, with explicit evidence limits, responsible owners, records, measures and stopping conditions. Proposed practices have not been evaluated in a new study.

19

Governance & succession · CC BY 4.0

Predictive models for charitable giving using machine learning techniques

Leily Farrokhvar; Azadeh Ansari; Behrooz Kamali

PLOS ONE · 2018-10-03

Adjacent evidence for family-office governance or philanthropy; original study population and measures are described in the companion. No direct family-office sample is claimed.

Original practical companion

Forecasting charitable receipts without confusing prediction with need: a model-governance guide

AI-assisted editorial analysis translating the cited study into a bounded family-office decision protocol, with explicit evidence limits, responsible owners, records, measures and stopping conditions. Proposed practices have not been evaluated in a new study.

20

Governance & succession · CC BY 4.0

Victim identifiability, number of victims, and unit asking in charitable giving

Hajdi Moche; Hulda Karlsson; Daniel Västfjäll

PLOS ONE · 2024-03-28

Adjacent evidence for family-office governance or philanthropy; original study population and measures are described in the companion. No direct family-office sample is claimed.

Original practical companion

Testing unit asking ethically: a scope-sensitive philanthropy protocol

AI-assisted editorial analysis translating the cited study into a bounded family-office decision protocol, with explicit evidence limits, responsible owners, records, measures and stopping conditions. Proposed practices have not been evaluated in a new study.

21

Governance & succession · CC BY 4.0

A study on the influence of personality characteristics on household charitable donation behavior in China

Kai Zhang; Bin Cao; Ya Zhang; Yawen Han

PLOS ONE · 2023-05-17

Adjacent philanthropy and resource-allocation research relevant to family-office governance; no family offices directly studied.

Original practical companion

Respecting donor agency: translating personality associations into an inclusive family giving process

The study uses 2018 China Family Panel Studies data to examine relationships between household heads’ Big Five personality measures and household giving. Its usable sample contains 10,479 observations after missing-value exclusions. Openness and conscientiousness are associated with some giving outcomes after adjustment for measured household and individual characteristics. For a family philanthropy office, the useful question is whether its process accommodates different ways of engaging with charitable decisions. The paper does not justify diagnosing a family member, predicting generosity from a personality label, or allocating governance authority on that basis. No family-office intervention was evaluated.

22

Governance & succession · CC BY 4.0

Charitable donations and the theory of planned behaviour: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Katherine M. White; Louise C. Starfelt Sutton; Xiang Zhao

PLOS ONE · 2023-05-19

Adjacent philanthropy and resource-allocation research relevant to family-office governance; no family offices directly studied.

Original practical companion

From charitable intention to completed giving: a family-foundation implementation audit

This systematic review and meta-analysis examines the theory of planned behaviour across charitable giving, including blood, organs, time and money. It combines 117 samples from 104 studies. The reported model explains more variance in intention than in subsequent behavior: the standard predictors explain 44 percent of intention variance, increasing to 52 percent with moral norm, while intention and perceived behavioral control explain 19 percent of behavior variance. For a family foundation, the central lesson is not a formula for predicting gifts. It is that a stated plan to give and an executed commitment are different outcomes requiring separate records.

23

Governance & succession · CC BY 4.0

Does charitable giving reduce firms’ willingness to invest in green innovation?

Hongpeng Wang

PLOS ONE · 2022-12-29

Adjacent philanthropy and resource-allocation research relevant to family-office governance; no family offices directly studied.

Original practical companion

Protecting innovation capacity when a portfolio company gives: a dual-budget review

The article examines charitable giving, government green subsidies and green innovation in a balanced panel of 863 Chinese listed manufacturing companies from 2016 to 2019, totaling 3,452 observations. It reports an inverted-U threshold pattern between charitable giving and green innovation and declining marginal associations of green subsidies with innovation as giving intensity increases. This evidence is adjacent to a family office that owns operating businesses. It is not a direct study of family foundations, unlisted firms or the financial returns of philanthropic portfolios, and its estimated thresholds are not universal donation limits.

24

Governance & succession · CC BY 4.0

Too cold for warm glow? Christmas-season effects in charitable giving

Stephan Müller; Holger A. Rau

PLOS ONE · 2019-05-22

Adjacent philanthropy and resource-allocation research relevant to family-office governance; no family offices directly studied.

Original practical companion

Testing the giving calendar: a seasonality protocol for family philanthropy

The paper compares giving to the German Red Cross during the Christmas season and summer in two studies. It reports lower laboratory giving in the Christmas period and explores self-reported stress and relative savings as possible explanations. The result challenges the assumption that a familiar giving season automatically increases an individual’s willingness to donate. It does not establish that a family foundation should abandon year-end fundraising, that every donor is less generous in December, or that a seasonal change will improve the office’s net receipts. The study setting and the real fundraising environment differ materially.

Publication and review record · 2026-11-01

Count the evidence. Preserve the distinction.

This expansion has added 206 works toward the requested 4,000: 2,000 source editions and 2,000 practical companions. The 104 works already in the journal are excluded from that target.

5.1% of the requested expansion published.

Article-specific license, metadata and source checks are recorded separately from human peer review. New practical companions are AI-assisted editorial analyses; no independent human peer-review acceptance is asserted. Recorded independent human acceptance for the new companions: 0. Source authors, original journals, publication dates and existing DOIs remain unchanged.

1,778 further metadata-screened leads are retained for investigation. Potential sources only. Publisher/version rights, full text, quality, retraction and related-version checks remain to be completed. They do not count as published articles or agents.

Checked DOI, source-version DOI and normalized title in available repository catalogs. Live submissions and all earlier review queues were not fully available; platform-wide novelty is not claimed.