Annika Geyer aims to advance the current understanding of variations in family businesses' growth performance and to explain their potential origins. She focuses on the respective impact of the set of relevant background factors (stemming from top executives' individual characteristics as well as the given organizational and social environment) on the firms growth performance and the underlying processes through which this impact is transmitted. The insights of this work constitute an essential step towards settling the debate on how the family actually contributes to the family firm's performance and hold some important implications for practitioners. Contents Variations in Strategic Choices Concerning Firm Growth: A Conceptual Framework and its Application to the Context of Family Businesses The Influence of Executives' Membership in the FB Owner-Family on Firm Growth Family Decision Makers in FBs, their Growth Intentions and Actual Firm Growth: The Influence of Different Levels of Family and Personal Involvement in the Firm Target Groups Researchers and students in the fields of strategic management, growth, upper echelon and family business research Managers and owners of family businesses The Author Dr. Annika Geyer wrote her dissertation under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Andreas Hack and Prof. Dr. Arist von Schlippe at the Witten Institute for Family Business (WIFU) at Witten/Herdecke University.