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ABSTRACT
The present guest editorial offers a review of the different conceptualizations of families in business used in research to date, shedding light on the unique characteristics of each type. Understanding the family through the lens of social systems theory offers a means for researchers to study contextually embedded family systems, offering a foundation for studying differences among families. We demonstrate that the family business system (ownership, business, family) is incomplete without a fourth component, that of the family in business. We then present the papers included in this special issue and highlight the collective contribution to research in the fields of family business and family entrepreneurship and provide directions for future research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. The field of family entrepreneurship thus aims to include and build upon the body of knowledge generated by the field of family business and by family business scholars.
2. We use the term « family in business » as a generic umbrella to include the different conceptualizations while avoiding confusion among them.