Prior literature establishes a link between family involvement and the firm financial performance. However, the mechanisms through which family involvement in a firm affects its financial performance in different institutional settings are largely unknown. Using an unbalanced panel of 3,322 listed firms from 32 countries over a 9-year period, we find that family involvement in ownership and management

Scholars and practitioners increasingly call for a more nuanced understanding of why and when family firm branding is more versus less effective. Across three studies, we find that, in general, communicating family ownership enhances consumer responses because it humanizes the company. Importantly, however, the effectiveness of this communication strategy depends on (a) the presence and (b) the source

This study investigates why and how family firms go public via initial public offering (IPO) and explores how family firms’ distinctive traits contribute to specific IPO behavior. The results show that family firms face IPO following three paths— shine, continue, and challenge. Family IPO firms emphasize control, identification, and succession ( shine); focus on family social capital, responsibility

Different social exchange relationships among family members and between family and non-family stakeholders influence individual, group, and family-firm outcomes. Although many studies provide insights into social exchange relationships in family businesses, these studies are scattered across multiple literatures. Using the lens of social exchange theory, we review and organize 74 such studies. After

This article maps and integrates research on legacy in family business using a sample of 140 articles. After describing the process of arriving at a corpus of legacy articles, we propose a systematic literature review that summarizes current literature based on five overarching questions: (a) What is legacy? (b) Who sends and receives legacy? (c) Why is legacy sent and accepted/rejected? (d) How is

Family business research across academic disciplines has increasingly considered the causes of “bad behavior” in family firms and its impact. A review of this literature is important because different emphases in different disciplines may obscure the nature of dysfunctional behaviors in family firms. After reviewing 160 studies from 64 journals, we propose family firm dysfunction is better understood

Using a framework that intersects strategic management and institutional economics, we show how differences in institutional environments and firm resources influence different types of strategic change (i.e., internationalization, innovation, and diversification) in family firms. We review 193 quantitative and qualitative articles to identify differences in strategic change and their performance consequences

Microfoundations research, generally conceptualized as explaining macro concepts and relationships in terms of micro-level behaviors and interactions, has been argued as critical to knowledge-building. Thus, we reviewed the family business literature to assess the state of microfoundations knowledge. Results indicate most research does not examine all microfoundational links. In addition, much of the

Nonfinancial outcomes (NFOs) are goals, objectives, performance indicators, or other results, effects, and consequences not operationalized in terms of direct monetary value. The most salient NFOs for family businesses represent socioemotional considerations that are unique to the family’s decisions and behaviors; yet there are hundreds of different outcomes that can be classified as nonfinancial,

Building on recent works calling for more tax research in the family business context, this study draws on the distinction between restricted and extended socioemotional wealth (SEW) to analyze how both SEW dimensions affect tax aggressiveness. Based on a sample of 201 private Belgian family firms, consistent findings from multiple regression analyses indicate that restricted SEW is positively related

Resilience attracts increasing attention across scientific domains, particularly in the context of family businesses, for which the ability to navigate adversity is pivotal for transgenerational success. This systematic literature review investigates 87 publications on organizational resilience in family businesses. Our analysis highlights four distinctive themes of family business resilience: (1)

This study examines the interplay between two influential yet opposing shareholder types—family blockholders and hedge funds—in relation to corporate innovation output. Using panel data on U.S. pub...

This study analyzes how family control influences firms’ acquisition activity using a socioemotional wealth (SEW) approach and discusses their anticipated SEW gains and losses when making acquisiti...

This study is concerned with how founding stories are sustained across multiple generations of employees in family firms and how these stories influence organizational identification. Drawing on a ...

We use concepts from rhetorical history and mnemonic communities to expand on the notion of “intermarriage” in a family business as the merger of shared histories among family members, nonfamily me...

Longevity is at the core of what makes family businesses special. Unlike most attempts to explain longevity that have focused primarily on the factors within a family business that lead to longevit...

Scholars have recently paid growing attention to the transfer of family legacies across generations, but existing work has been mainly focused on an inward-oriented, intra-family, perspective. In t...

The concept of “generation” in family business scholarship is primarily used genealogically to reflect family lineage. This approach fails to account for complementary perspectives that are more es...

Family firms purportedly use different socioemotional wealth (SEW) reference points in choosing strategies, yet empirical research continues to use family involvement as a proxy for SEW. This study...

Innovation literature increasingly considers the importance of the temporal dimension of knowledge search. In particular, several qualitative studies demonstrate how family firms successfully searc...

Wealth concentration is a common problem worldwide, and research reveals that wealth is most concentrated in family firm holdings. We examined the influence of local political structure on the conc...

Family firms are known for their reluctance to invest in R&D. We show that strengthened trade secret protection is associated with higher R&D investment by family firms. More specifically, we show ...

Using a systematic literature review, we address the topic of social capital in family firms. Based on 69 studies, we analyze the main findings, sampling and methodologies, theoretical approaches, ...

The purpose of this article is to explore strategy advisors’ actions and interactions with family actors and nonfamily managers for strategy work in family businesses. By combining the strategy-as-...

To take stock of the literature on identity in family firms (IFF), we examine 122 journal articles published between 2006 and 2020. We then develop a thematic map to help scholars understand the st...

Drawing on 62 interviews with 23 family businesses in Cyprus concerning the 2013–2018 (Eurozone) debt crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, this study offers new knowledge on why and how family social ...

Despite significant discussion surrounding the benefits of family social capital in family business research, precisely how it is built and maintained by enterprise families remains unclear. To exp...

A critical aspect for the continuity of family businesses (FB) is the existence of willing successors. In this article, we use the imprinting theory to ground an explanation of how the family impri...

Although family businesses and social enterprises are typically examined as distinct organizational forms, research in both domains recognizes the significant influence of family on organizational ...

Despite the growing interest in resilience in the family business context, little attention has been devoted to understanding the influence of religion on the way business families respond to adver...

This study examines the effects of international expansion on domestic growth in family firms (FFs) versus non-FFs. Integrating international business research into socioemotional wealth (SEW) theo...

We are honored to present the fourth Review Issue of Family Business Review (FBR). In 2016, FBR Editors Jeremy C. Short, Pramodita Sharma, Thomas Lumpkin, and Allison W. Pearson launched a series of special issues in FBR to track and understand the fast evolution of family business research produced since the early 1970s. With more than 2,000 family business articles published in the 1990s (Sharma

This article critically reviews and meta-analyzes the environmental performance of family firms. Using a sample of 40,910 firms covering a 12-year period, we conclude that the average effect of family involvement on environmental performance is negative, albeit small. This negative effect is more pronounced in primary studies that measure environmental performance via the environmental operational

The concept of generations has become increasingly important in the social science fields to explain diverse phenomena affecting organizations. This is especially true in the family business field ...

In family firms, the family often plays a central role in the strategic decisions of the business. However, until recently, research has primarily focused on exploring the role that business factors play in firm decision-making, with less attention given to the role of the family system. This article reviews the research on executive compensation in family firms to understand whether and how the family

This article develops a two-part theoretical framework synthesizing the socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective with image theory to explain the ways in which family decision makers screen and potentially adopt habitual new venture opportunities. The model theorizes that opportunities are initially screened according to their ability to preserve SEW and fit with the family’s value images and subsequently

While entrepreneurial families often expand their activity over multiple businesses and patrimonial assets, this complexity is rarely addressed in mainstream family business research, where the predominant focus is on the family business or, at best, on the family controlling the operational business. We advance a more holistic understanding of entrepreneurial families that contemplates the variety

The family business literature barely addresses wives’ influence in family business succession. Where it does so, the result is often tokenistic, stereotypical, and imprecise. Drawing on 34 in-depth interviews, this article makes three contributions. First, it identifies wives’ critical influence in family business succession through socialization across the life span of the family business; specifically

We depict Hollywood celebrity couples as business families who participate in the project-based movie production industry, which is a temporary and disaggregated form of organization where skilled individuals are linked to one another through contractual and social relationships. Appearing in Hollywood movies generates celebrity capital, which can be converted into economic capital through involvement

Based on the socioemotional wealth approach and a sample of 3,904 subsidiary ownership choices made by 586 family firms, this study shows that family-managed firms (i.e., those family firms with a family member in a leadership position) prefer wholly owned subsidies over joint ventures when entering foreign markets. Family-managed firms are also more likely to revise their subsidiary ownership choices

Although the family business research field and related disciplines are paying increasing attention to improvements in methodology, there is still insufficient attention being paid to endogeneity issues. We therefore raise awareness of endogeneity and suggest ways to reduce biased results in family business studies. We review publications in the family business literature in terms of (1) the consideration

Every management scholar is keenly aware of the need for contemporary research to make a theoretical contribution to the literature. As editors and reviewers, we wear the hat of “gatekeepers of the quality of the journal” (Chrisman et al., 2017, p. 214) and our assessment of the theoretical contributions of the manuscripts we appraise significantly color our editorial recommendations and decisions

We draw upon the mixed gamble perspective to investigate the entry timing decisions made by family firms in the context of cross-border acquisition (CBA) waves. We argue that family-controlled firms trade-off short-term SEW and financial losses in favor of long-term SEW and financial gains, while moving early in CBA waves. Findings suggest that family-controlled firms have a higher preference for early

Exploring the psychological foundations of management in family firms is necessary to understand why they formulate and implement strategies differently from nonfamily firms, and why and how family firm behavior varies across different family firms. Picone et al. (2021. The psychological foundations of management in family firms: Values, biases, and heuristics. Family Business Review, 34(1), 12-32)

While progress has been made in recent years to understand the differences among family firms, insights remain fragmented due, in part, to an incomplete understanding of heterogeneity and the scope of differences that exist among family firms. Given this, we offer a definition of and review the literature on family firm heterogeneity. A latent semantic analysis of 781 articles from 33 journals identified

We extend relational demography theory by introducing kinship as a new demographic characteristic of categorization. We theorize that family firm employees’ kinship similarity (family vs. nonfamily), kinship tie (child vs. other familial relationship), and gender (female vs. male) uniquely affect their organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Data collected from 209 family CEO–employee dyads indicate

It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Considering the heterogeneity of family firm behaviors as reflecting the values, biases, and heuristics of individuals, we discuss the implications of the psychological foundations of management in family firms. We develop a conceptual framework for investigating how the values, biases, and heuristics of family and nonfamily members affect strategic decision-making and the outcomes of family firms

Organizational ambidexterity is vital for family firms’ long-term success, yet we still lack sufficient insights into the role of family involvement in top management in this context. Building on research on family firm innovation and diversity, we argue there are curvilinear relationships between family involvement in top management and exploration, exploitation, and organizational ambidexterity.

Based on stewardship theory and social role theory, we examine the bounded nature of nonfamily employees’ individual stewardship behaviors (i.e., organizational citizenship behavior, OCB) in family...

Drawing on upper echelons theory, this study examines how the traditionality of family chief executive officers (CEOs) influences the selection of their successors, and how this relationship is mod...

The role words and narratives play in understanding rich relationships critical to family business cannot be overstated. This truth was highlighted by a recent landmark case resulting in the awarding of $572 million dollars to the state of Oklahoma based on opioid marketing in a case against a firm Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter often disparagingly referred to as “a family company.” Unfortunately

This analysis provides a review of family business literature concerning the application of socioemotional wealth (SEW) and its extension through the FIBER framework. Specifically, we answer Brigham and Payne’s call by assessing the multidimensionality of the SEW construct, the interrelatedness of the dimensions, and its specificity to family firms. We contribute to the literature by conducting a systematic

Drawing on agency and behavioral perspectives, we disentangle two critical determinants of innovation strategies among family firms, namely, the family’s wealth concentration (WC) in its business and the family’s emphasis on family-centered goals (FCGs). Our results from a survey of Australian family firms show opposite and completely independent effects of WC and family-centered noneconomic goals

Research often assumes that a controlling family’s social bonds contributes to superior firm performance. However, there is little theory to address these relationships and findings are often mixed. Here, we integrate resource-based and need-to-belong theories to address these issues, introducing family business potency as a key mediating variable between family cohesion, participative strategy processes

This study examines the influence of individual owner-manager values on the different dimensions of socioemotional wealth in family firms. We argue that values of owner-managers in family firms are...

Our purpose in this editorial is to draw attention to the powerful but undertheorized role played by traditions in family businesses. Our core argument is that traditions are the foundational element of successful family businesses. As we elaborate here, we believe that family business success and longevity are directly correlated with the capacity to successfully manage the creation, maintenance,

SUBMISSION DUE DATE: July 1, 2021

In this article, we explore intergenerational moral emotions as a psychological root of ethical management practices. We develop a conceptual model of next-generation guilt in family business by bu...