Entrepreneurial families in business across generations, contexts and cultures

Abstract

PurposeThis article is the editorial for the special issue on “Entrepreneurial Families in Business Across Generations, Contexts and Cultures”. We aim to develop a road map that can help academics and practitioners navigate the findings of the articles contained in this special issue. We also suggest future lines of research around the topic of entrepreneurial families in business.Design/methodology/approachWe develop a conceptual model for interpreting and understanding entrepreneurial families in business across contexts and time.FindingsOur conceptual model highlights the importance of context and time when conducting research on entrepreneurial families in business.Practical implicationsThe findings in this special issue will be of relevance for decision makers who tailor policies that embrace different economic and social actors, including entrepreneurial families.Originality/valueThis editorial and the articles that make up this special issue contribute to family business research by contextualising the phenomenon of entrepreneurial families in business. We propose a new holistic perspective to incorporate context and time in the study of entrepreneurial families that own, govern and manage family firms over time.

Researching migrant entrepreneurship communities: a reflection through collaborative (auto)ethnographies

“…It can also allow the interpretation of stories told by migrant families in business (Hamilton et al 2017), as well as further understanding of their approach to entrepreneurship (Discua Cruz et al 2020), according to the researcher's personal perspectives, without removing themselves from what is being studied. Moreover, it can help understand the development of migrant or ethnic entrepreneurial groups over time and across contexts (Stamm et al 2019;James et al 2020), as individuals who act as "familiar" (Adams et al 2014) (in this case as researchers) may indeed tap into the essence of what makes certain migrants and certain migration and integration trajectories unique.…”

“…Such mundanity does not exclude migrant entrepreneurs in the way they go about starting ventures in the places where they reside or move between (Evansluong and Ramírez-Pasillas 2018). The outcome of entrepreneurial processes for migrants points towards focusing on a better understanding of the motivation of individuals; for instance: necessity as opposed to opportunity-based entrepreneurship, (Dencker et al 2019), teams (Ben-Hafaïedh and Cooney 2017), and families (James et al 2020). As scholars call to advance our understanding of entrepreneurship by migrants around the world (Elo et al 2018;Guerrero and Wanjiru 2019), there is an opportunity to focus on the approach and rationale of future studies.…”

Contextualizing employment outcomes in family business research: current findings and future research avenues

“…The most common strategy in these articles consists of using contextual dimensions as moderator variables in the main relationship between family involvement (demographic or essence variables) and employment outcomes. The interpretation of context in this quadrant applies the multi-embeddedness framework for family firms (James et al 2020) by discriminating between different contexts, such as the family (e.g., Amore et al 2017), the meso-context (e.g., industry, labour market, or region) (e.g., Bach and Serrano-Velarde 2015), and the country (Chen et al 2014). Each of these contexts combines existing family business approaches (e.g., socioemotional wealth) with mainstream theories, such as institutional theory (van Essen et al 2015) and occupational choice theory (Block et al 2018).…”

“…More specifically, we propose that context may help shed new light on why, when, and where the dark or bright sides of family firms emerge because context can boost or hinder (Johns2006) the family's influence on employment outcomes. In dealing with this gap, we follow Gomez-Mejia et al (2020) and James et al (2020) to argue that context has been overlooked across levels of analysis when explaining the phenomenon of employment outcomes within family business research.…”

Sucessão em Empresas Familiares: Um Olhar a partir do Conceito de Conatus

“…Furthermore, it is also not possible to identify in Bourdieu's works any reference to these firms (Queiroz, 2008), although many of Bourdieu's theories present reflections about the family institution (Bourdieu, 1996a). It demonstrates the potential of applying his theoretical-conceptual framework to understand the complexity of such organizations (James, Hadjielias, Guerrero, Cruz, & Basco, 2020;Kushins & Behounek, 2020).…”