Review of Family Business Definitions: Cluster Approach and Implications of Heterogeneous Application for Family Business Research

Henrik Harms

doi:10.3390/ijfs2030280

Abstract

This review article displays several attempts to define family businesses as well as a systematization approach to get new insights about the relationship between family business definitions and their application under different conditions such as legal framework, culture or regional understanding of family. Potential explanations for the ambiguity of what is meant by family firms are revealed by reviewing 267 journal articles. A consensus about the object of investigation would result in a deeper understanding of family firms’ uniqueness, might lead to more reliable comparative studies as well as interdisciplinary work (e.g., finance and family firms) and enables a quicker consolidation of family business research, especially in contrast to research on small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurship. Therefore, the present review contributes to the development of family business research by providing an initial attempt to comprehensively systematized existing family firm definitions which could be used by researchers in family business research.

Highlights

In place of trying to include as many family business related publications as possible to give an all-embracing historical overview on the development of family business research, this review focuses on the most influential articles since 1988 identified through corresponding lists provided by academic publishing companies such as Sage
It can be observed that the number of articles which take questions relevant for family businesses into account and delineate those firms from other groups of companies increased over the years
This growth in importance initially became apparent in family business research based in the United States (79) and in Europe (74), but can be reflected in the relatively high number of comparative studies (25), which can be regarded as an indicator for the ongoing consolidation of the research area

Summary

Introduction

While some studies identified only 15% of all enterprises as family businesses (Kayser and Wallau [1]), 1 others classified up to 79% of all companies as family firms (Chrisman et al 2004 [2]).family business studies do not build on a unified definition of the object of investigation so that the progress of the academic field might be hampered which could lead to a delayed consolidation of family business theory.Admittedly, family business research gets more and more accepted as independent field of study in (business) economics, which can be observed by looking at the increasing number of newly published journals (e.g., Journal of Family Business Strategy), special issues (e.g., Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Volume 37, Issue 1, January 2013, Special Issue on Entrepreneurial and Family BusinessTeams) and conference tracks (e.g., Strategic Interest Group at European Academy of Management) on this specific group of companies. Family business studies do not build on a unified definition of the object of investigation so that the progress of the academic field might be hampered which could lead to a delayed consolidation of family business theory. In spite of longstanding scientific research on family business issues and the considerable economic relevance of this group of companies, no jointly accepted definition exists within the research field. Results differ significantly depending on contextual issues such as the topic, the area under examination and the period of investigation. This in turn might impede comparative family business analyses as well as those pointed at the analysis of differences to small and medium-sized enterprises.

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion