Natalia Vershinina, Audencia Business School

Cristina Bettinelli, University of Bergamo

Marco Mismetti, Stockholm School of Economics

Giovanna Campopiano, University of Bergamo

Paola Rovelli, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano

Andreas Giazitzoglu, Northumbria University

This special issue examines how gender inequality in family firms operates through organisational structures and decision-making processes rather than individual attitudes. The call challenges mainstream family business research that overlooks how patriarchal norms systematically advantage male family members while rendering women's contributions invisible or subordinate.

Contributions should apply gender theory and the willingness-ability-authority framework to show how governance structures enable or constrain efforts toward redistribution of power. The editors particularly welcome studies exposing how initiatives may appear progressive without achieving substantive change, and work examining hegemonic masculinity in family contexts—how ideals of the effective heir shape succession decisions and police gender performances.

Appel publié par Gender Work and Organization. Lire l'appel complet sur le site de l'éditeur. Fiche de l'appel sur kerostig.

Potential topics

• Hegemonic masculinities and succession: How are readiness, leadership potential and fit defined and performed in family firms? Which rites of passage, informal trials, and evaluation criteria enact masculinity contests among heirs? Under what discursive and relational conditions can men's explicit advocacy for equality enhance, rather than erode, their standing? When and how do care-centred, collaborative, or non-hegemonic masculinities gain legitimacy?
• Willingness, ability, and the redistribution of authority: Where does willingness collapse under kinship politics, and where does it convert into action? Which specific instruments — binding remuneration committees, gender-equal succession clauses, mixed family/non-family appointment slates with veto power — shift ability from kin coalitions to institutionalised bodies with enforceable rights? How do these arrangements travel across generational transitions?
• Emotional, aesthetic, and reputational glue work: How do feminised labours of harmony, client smoothing and reputational caretaking sustain legitimacy without converting into jurisdiction, ownership or promotion in family firms and in entrepreneurial families? What happens when these labours are surfaced, measured, rewarded, or redistributed, and what is the role of the family in this? How do these practices differentially tax daughters, wives, in-laws, and non-family managers?
• Temporal dynamics: path dependence and rupture: When do equality reforms survive family firm succession events? What tipping points loosen masculinity-contest logics and allow successors to deploy formal authority for redistribution rather than preservation? How do market shocks, legal changes, or religious norms recalibrate both willingness and ability in family firms? How do successors' identity work when logics evolve during a generational transition?
• Intersectional and comparative analysis: How do age, class, ethnicity, marital/parental status, sexual orientation, and religion shape the policing of masculinities, feminities and the credibility of actor's authority claims? How do family structures (extended families, polygamy, multi-branch ownership) mediate gendered governance? What travels, and what does not, across national cultures, legal frameworks, and faith traditions?
• External accountability vs. internal decision rights: When do ESG disclosures, audits, and investor or customer pressures reconfigure internal masculine ideals and decision rights in family firms and when are they absorbed as optics? What coupling mechanisms translate external accountability into binding internal authority for equality actors?

Timeline

• October 1, 2027: Submission deadline