Entrepreneurial families and family firms

Abstract

While studies of entrepreneurship and family business have to a great extent developed independently, there are some indications that they are now moving closer to each other. The purpose of this special issue is to contribute to an increased scholarly interest in research that integrates the areas of entrepreneurship and family business. This introductory article elaborates upon the meaning of entrepreneurial families and family firms. Based on a review of a significant amount of previous literature and the articles in this special issue, we generate a guiding framework around three themes – actor, activity and attitude. We argue that research focusing on specific topics within these themes has great potential to contribute to our theoretical and empirical understanding of entrepreneurship and family firms. We also share a note on why we believe Entrepreneurship and Regional Development is a suitable arena for publishing research with this orientation. We then introduce the five papers that are included in this special issue using the framework developed to position the papers and thereby to reveal their respective contributions and their advancement of our knowledge. We conclude with reflections on some unexplored themes, which are still very relevant to examine in future research on entrepreneurship and family businesses.

Keywords:

• entrepreneurship
• family business
• family as unit of analysis
• entrepreneurial family
• entrepreneurial exit
• entrepreneurial orientation

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the journal's editor-in-chief Professor Alistair Anderson for his significant support during the process of creating this special issue. We also greatly appreciate the valuable comments from him and from the former editor-in-chief, Professor Bengt Johannisson on earlier drafts of this article. This article's content has been inspired by conversations with many colleagues who we are fortunate to work with within the Global STEP Project. We are particularly indebted to Tim Habbershon, Thomas Zellweger, Rob Nason and Ethel Brundin. Tanja Radovanovic and Laura Henderson provided important research assistance. The financial support from Carl-Olof and Jenz Hamrin's Foundation and The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1. For more information about The Global STEP Project, please visit www.stepproject.org.

2. In Sweden, for instance, Nutek – the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth – has the Government's mission to facilitate ownership transitions in mainly SMEs (www.nutek.se).