The Nature of Long-lived Family Firms

Éditeurs invités

• Dianne H.B. Welsh, University of North Carolina Greensboro
• Mathew Hughes, University of Leicester
• Muhibul Haq, Huddersfield Business School
• Wilson Ng, IDRAC Business School

Synthèse

This special issue examines what distinguishes long-lived family firms from those that fail in earlier generations. The call seeks to understand the values, attributes, and characteristics that enable family businesses to persist across time and across different cultural, geographical, and economic contexts, particularly when operating without religious foundations or under conditions of significant adversity.

The special issue invites theoretical and empirical research on family firms and family-controlled groups of all sizes, from micro-businesses to large multinational enterprises. Studies may examine individual cases or comparisons between long-lived and short-lived firms, explore succession mechanisms and performance metrics, or analyze organizations with family-like characteristics such as ethnic clan associations and cooperative entities.

Thèmes proposés

• Theoretical perspectives, practices, and paradigms of one or more cases of long-lived family firms, including comparative cases of long-lived and short-lived family firms
• Individual and comparative studies of persistence among long-lived family firms and other cases of long-lived, closely-controlled businesses, including groups of businesses and not-for-profit organizations
• Research on multigenerational family-owned firms with unusual features such as female successors, joint-CEOs who are siblings, values wedded to religious and/or other beliefs
• Analyses of panel and other empirical data on attributes and characteristics of family-controlled firms that may contribute to their longevity, including succession planning, performance metrics, shared beliefs and behavioral attributes
• Individual and comparative studies of long-lived entities that were founded as family firms but are no longer family owned and/or controlled, or where family shareholders have restricted themselves to a passive investment role
• Individual and comparative case studies of longevity among individual, social and other non-commercial entities, such as family-owned charitable organizations