The volume under review studies business groups and mid-sized family businesses in Latin America, including papers on Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. It does not deal with family-owned business groups, although a couple of chapters do dwell on the structure of such groups, considering their organisation along family lines. In his introductory essay, the editor emphasises that one of the unifying themes of the volume is the ‘importance of family networks in the implementation and expansion of businesses in the region’ (p. 10). The nature of these networks is explored in varying degrees in the different chapters, which approach these issues following a wide range of methodological perspectives.

Chapter 1 by Tomás Undurraga deals with how Chilean business groups and, more generally, the Chilean business sector has restructured since the establishment of a new economic model in the mid-1970s, and dealt with the transition to democracy in the country since 1990. The institutional features of the Chilean economy have led, it is argued, to a restoration of a process of economic concentration in the hands of business groups. Given the author's interest in the ‘cultural circuits’ of capitalism, the main part of the essay presents a general sociological interpretation of the advance (and contemporary retreat?) of the business sector as an influential political actor in Chile.

In a related fashion, that is, without focusing directly either on business groups or on family businesses, chapter 3 by Luis Alfonso Ramírez Carrillo examines the nature of the Mexican business sector. Here we are presented with a broad review of the literature on this subject, considering studies that span different eras of the Mexican economy, and including contributions from different fields: business history, social and economic history, and sociology. The author is mainly interested in the effects of globalisation on the organisation of private business in Mexico, and in the end he advances a preliminary conclusion regarding this issue that stresses the importance of regional heterogeneity in the country.

On the other hand, in chapter 2 Beatriz Rodríguez-Satizábal formally examines business groups in Colombia between 1974 and 1998. As she identifies the main features of business groups in this country, the author sheds important light on a previously unexplored topic, where the availability of information has represented a major limitation. While the analysis and results presented here may be sensitive to several methodological definitions this is precisely the sort of issue one looks forward to as one reads a volume such as this (note, for example, the way the author presents the theoretical literature on business groups, and how she makes this definition operational for her classification purposes). The study shows, perhaps not surprisingly in the Latin American context, the importance of family-owned business groups in Colombia. The evolution of these family business groups, and their increasing diversification in the financial sector of the economy, is explained as a rational response to some type of capital constraint, presumably related to the economic environment. The data generated for this chapter represents a great foundation for the study of the evolution of business groups in Latin America, and this work is an exceptional starting point in this literature.

The final three chapters deal with some specific case studies on business groups and family businesses. In chapter 4, Mario Cerutti examines the history of the Fundidora de Fierro y Acero de Monterrey between 1900 and 1975. This narrative is an outstanding study in business history, and although not really novel, is relevant to this volume as an examination of a particular business group. The author presents this group's evolution in a changing political and economic environment in Mexico. As the defining characteristics of business groups are highlighted, it is argued that most definitions cannot fully deal with the complexities discovered by historical (and contemporary) evidence on these organisations. The author thus feels prepared to advance a new criterion in this sense in order to distinguish between business groups as industrial groups (‘grupos industriales’) and economic groups (‘grupos económicos’), where the latter would basically have a greater organisational complexity.

The papers by David Wong Cam, Harold Hernández Lefranc and Miguel Chirinos (chapter 5) and by David Wong Cam, Carlos Parodi Trece and Martín Monsalve Zanatti (chapter 6) present modern case studies on the competitiveness of mid-sized family businesses in Peru. In practice, family-controlled firms may or may not be more profitable than nonfamily ones. In these chapters the issue is posed in terms of the creation of competitive advantages as no financial performance indicators are presented. In each case the authors present their account in the context of specific theoretical models, thus attempting to shed light on the problems faced in general by these types of businesses. However, these analytic narratives appear somewhat thin. Wong Cam, Hernández Lefranc and Chirinos consider agency and stewardship models as alternative lenses for an examination of family businesses in Peru. While not a truly original framework, these models seem useful to explain the evolution of the family business considered here. Wong Cam, Parodi Trece and Monsalve Zanatti advance path dependence as their relevant theoretical construct. The rationale for this framework appears less clear: while it may constitute an attempt to consider the importance of irreversible investments, it distracts from the role of strategic considerations. In the end, while both these chapters present interesting perspectives on the problems faced by family businesses, their scope is too narrow; the case study method indeed faces generalisability problems.

The volume under examination thus represents a collection of essays of uneven value. This is related to the unique contribution each chapter (incidentally, non-numbered in the volume) offers to the problems faced by business groups and mid-sized family businesses in Latin America. One can also argue whether the volume has a clear unifying theme. As a whole, the volume will be disappointing to readers expecting a broad, revealing review on either of these issues, where additional research is very welcome.