The main concern in this paper is to explore the literature of governance regarding both the large corporation and the family business to further our understanding of the separation of ownership and management in family business in general and in the owner managed family firm in particular. Drawing on our review of these two separate approaches to governance in the literature we argue that by combining them we can further our understanding of governance changes in family firms. We conceptualize a governance change where an external CEO is introduced in the owner managed family firm as the untangling of ownership and management. This change takes place both in a complex context of the family controlled business and in an institutionalized context where practices of the large corporations influence the notions of general management and governance. We conclude that qualitative and interpretive approaches to the study of changes in governance would contribute to our understanding of these complex social processes that implies (re-)constructing the meaning and practice of ownership and management in family firms.