Why do large business group families in Asia tend to marry their family members to each other? It is possible that the marriage ties among large family business groups are driven by their needs of resource access and maintaining market position and hence the groups unite with each other in order to secure the resources and coordinate prices. It is also possible, however, that marriage ties form to maintain an elite social status. Elite families establish marriage ties with each other to sustain the exclusive boundaries of their status group and maintain their apex identities. Although family business groups are widely connected to each other through various formal connections and informal social ties, less attention has been paid to marriage and its impact on group strategy and performance. Drawn from interdisciplinary studies in sociology and management science, I plan to develop a theoretical framework that specifies how resource considerations of business group families promote marriage ties and how it may strategically vary among families with distinct social status during the market transition. This study highlights the potential trade-offs that family business groups may confront when they form marriage ties in emerging economies where traditional social structures and market-oriented transitions co-exist. I also seek to contribute to research on business groups in emerging economies by switching the traditional focus on intragroup networks and their outcomes to the genesis and evolution of intergroup networks. The hypotheses derived from our framework will be tested with a unique data from family businesses in Taiwan.