A review of the educational and support infrastructure for family business in the UK

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to review the educational and support infrastructure for UK family firms in order to further raise the profile/challenges and support needs of family firms in the UK.Design/methodology/approachSecondary data sources relating to family businesses are reviewed in this article with a view to identifying the current infrastructure of support for family firms. These reports are also supplemented with interview material from respondents in family business associations.FindingsThis review indicates that awareness of family business public policy issues has increased in recent years in the UK. There is also an emergent support infrastructure dedicated to the needs of family businesses. There is also a growing body of research helping to overcome the (family business) dualist theoretical legacy that has dominated the field. Greater definitional clarity is also helping to inter‐relate the special needs of family firms to issues of resource, ownership, management, size and life cycle and the propagation of new theories and perspectives as seen above are contributing to better understanding about the special needs. There is still some way to go, however, before family businesses are fully acknowledged for their significant role to the national economy.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper reconsiders some of the original insights generated from occupational sociology which fully recognises the intertwining (and absorptive) relationships between family and work, and recognises the important and absorptive role that families in business contribute to the economy and society.Originality/valueThis paper signals that the entrepreneurs of today create the family businesses of tomorrow. This means progressing from a single‐heroic view of entrepreneurship and taking forward of a family embedded conceptualisation of entrepreneurship into educational programmes.