As a special enterprise cluster,family businesses are facing a new era of governance transformation and inheritance alternation,and defamilization has become a hot topic of concern.This article reviews existing research,first elaborates on the characteristics of family businesses,summarizes the path and measurement methods of defamilization,summarizes the influencing factors of defamilization,and analyzes the economic consequences of defamilization from both positive and negative aspects,including corporate value,strategic investment decisions,and financing decisions.Finally,it summarizes and looks forward to research on defamilization,and explores future research directions.