Modern day family firms, like other contemporary businesses, are confronted with the challenges of clearly and effectively communicating their intentions to stakeholders in their pursuit of achieving financial success while also acting ethically in the stewarding of resources. Intertemporal Stewardship Theory (IST) provides the framework for integrating these challenges and for linking them to organization success. Accordingly, corporate guiding statements are critical in communicating to stakeholders the intentions of the organization.

This qualitative embedded single-case study (Yin, 2003b) sought to understand how the personal values of a family firm's founder influenced the organization's corporate guiding statements and to what extent employees agreed with the statements. The following data sources were analyzed: (a) qualitative interviews, (b) an employee survey, (c) corporate documents, and (d) archived artifacts. Results from the in-depth interview series with the organization's founder indicated his personal values influenced the organization's corporate guiding statements. The employee survey results indicated a level of agreement with the organization's corporate guiding statements. These results provide insights into the future research of corporate governance and Intertemporal Stewardship Theory with regard to family firms.