2012

FBR’s Team

In this issue, 137 scholars appear on FBR’s masthead—a 10-member editorial team, 9 advisory board members, and 118 review board members. This number is up from 102 in 2012, indicating some changes in the FBR’s team, elaborated below.

Three major changes occurred in the 10-member editorial team that served the journal in 2012. Franz Kellermanns, who had served as an associate editor of FBR from 2009 to 2012 rotated off after two successful terms. He rejoins the FBR’s review board. Wim Voordeckers, who was singled out as an excellent reviewer three years in a row, joined our team as an associate editor. The book review section is being tapered off in 2013; Marion McCollom Hampton completed her second term as the book review editor at the end of 2012. Under her leadership, several innovative features such as the composite book reviews and summer reading lists were introduced. Despite the high quality of the published reviews and innovations we introduced, the usage of this section has dropped over the years. We suspect this drop is due to the widespread availability of online reviews and the time lag inevitable between the appearance of a book in the market and its review in a scholarly journal such as FBR. After publishing the last few reviews that are in print, FBR will no longer have a book review section. We thank Franz and Marion for their commendable service to FBR, and we welcome Wim to our editorial team!

In 2012, Karen Vinton joined our team as the assistant editor of FBR. Tasked with finding ways to increase the flow of knowledge from research to practice and vice versa, she introduced the executive summaries of all articles published in FBR. These summaries highlight the implications for practice and are listed online alongside the article. The Family Firm Institute and SAGE use these summaries to disseminate research findings in their networks. In addition, this year, Karen had done several podcasts with author(s) whose work has appeared in FBR. While both these initiatives were aimed to disseminate scientific knowledge into the practitioner communities, a third initiative—“Call for Research”—is being introduced in this issue. This new section will feature short articles written by practitioners on topics they regularly encounter in their work but feel a strong need for more usable knowledge based on rigorous research. The article by Hutcheson, Jaffe, and Gilliland on addiction in the family enterprise kicks off this new initiative. This section will appear in FBR from time to time when an appropriate article is received. It is our hope that such calls from thoughtful practitioners will encourage scholars to undertake research on topics considered important in practice leading to interesting research investigations. Practitioners can then help scholars with data collection.

In addition to the 10-member editorial team, 9 advisory board members keep an oversight on this journal. Three long-serving members of the advisory board members—Leif Melin, Ken Moores, and Shaker Zahra—rotated off in December 2012. All three of them have served on the FBR best article selection committee in the past and have been a guiding beacon for our editorial team. We thank them for their wise counsel over the years and will continue to call on them for advice. Stepping in their place as FBR’s advisory board members are Eileen Fischer, Duane Ireland, and Tom Lumpkin. We thank them for agreeing to serve in this critical role for FBR and look forward to working with them.

A total of 118 scholars serve on FBR’s review board in 2013, up from 62 in the last year. While three rotated off end of 2012, 59 new members joined FBR’s review board. This large influx reflects the fast pace of growth in our field and growing interest in the journal. If we were to recognize the “the most valuable players” in FBR’s continuous ascent in impact and significance over the past few years, it would be our reviewers who unfailingly deliver high-quality developmental reviews that assist action editors with their decisions and improve the overall expectations of research rigor in our field. Since 2009, the average turnaround time from the FBR’s reviewers has consistently been less than 20 days.

The FBR’s Best Reviewer Awards aim to honor the dedicated service of our reviewers. Each year, when the editorial team confers to decide the award winners, the incredible support FBR receives from so many exceptional scholars who generously lend their time and expertise to help build knowledge in our field becomes evident. The 2012 Outstanding Reviewer award recipient was Alessandro Minichilli, who was singled out for his outstanding reviews by four different action editors. Nine scholars who received the honorable mention awards for exceptional reviewing are Matthew Allen, Cristina Bettinelli, Daniel Holt, Alexander McKelvie, Aaron McKenny, Evelyn Micelotta, Tyge Payne, Mia Raynard, and Wim Voordeckers. Congratulations to our winners and many thanks to all our reviewers!

Input . . . Throughput . . . Output

A total of 222 submissions were received during the year from first authors in 35 countries. While the United States continued as the lead source of submissions (53; 23.9%), Italy and Spain followed at 19 (8.6%) and 18 (8.1%), respectively. Germany, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan were the next three countries with more than 5% submissions from each. Nineteen articles coauthored by 49 researchers were published in the 25th volume of FBR. These authors came from the United States (19); Italy (6); Canada and Switzerland (4 each); Sweden and South Africa (3 each); Hong Kong, Spain, and the United Kingdom (2 each); and China, Denmark, and the Netherlands (1 each). Although the dominance of the United States both in submissions and acceptances continues, research from around the world made its way to the pages of FBR. In 2012, the average turnaround time for submissions to FBR was about 40 days, and the acceptance ratio was 12.5%.

A committee chaired by Jill Thomas and formed of three voting members—Guido Corbetta, James Davis, and Tom Lumpkin—selected the Best Article Award winners for articles published in FBR in 2011. Bettinelli’s (2011) empirical study on the structure and processes of board of directors in family enterprises received the Best Paper Award, while Block’s (2011) conceptual article on how to pay nonfamily members in large family firms received the honorable mention certificate. All FBR awards were presented at the annual conference of the Family Firm Institute. Congratulations to the winners and many thanks to our judges!

Volume 25 Content Overview

Review pieces dominated FBR in 2012, starting with the March issue that carried articles providing an overview of the field from different perspectives. For example, Yu, Lumpkin, Sorenson, and Brigham (2012) review 257 empirical studies on family business published between 1998 and 2009 to identify and classify the 327 dependent variables used in the literature. While all reviews point toward a bright future for the field and for FBR, there were some cautionary remarks as well (Craig & Salvato, 2012; Sharma et al., 2012). Perhaps the most poignant reminder is for researchers to focus on the “family” system or variable, as it is the reciprocal influence of family and business that distinguishes family business studies from others disciplines (e.g., Litz, Pearson, & Litchfield, 2012; Stewart & Hitt, 2012). James, Jennings, and Breitkruz (2012) review family studies literatures to suggest theoretical perspectives that may be employed for such research. Some green shoots efforts to define and measure the family variable are beginning to emerge in the literature (e.g., Sharma & Salvato, in press), though much work lies ahead.

The article by Zellweger, Nason, and Nordqvist (2012) in the June issue challenges the notion of succession rates often used in media, thereby redirecting the conversation to focus on “enterprising families” rather than “an enterprise of a family.” Strike’s (2012) review on family business advising is likely to guide research for the 2013 September special issue on this important topic. While family foundations have been used in practice for several decades now, scholarly research on these organizations was nonexistent until the article by Lungeanu and Ward (2012) in the December issue, opening rich avenues for future research.

Surveys and case studies have been the dominant methodologies used in family business studies since the inception of the field. Research published in the September 2012 issue illustrates how other methods such as simulations (Chirico, Nordqvist, Colombo, & Mollona, 2012), content analysis (McKenny, Short, Zachary, & Payne, 2012), and narrative analysis (Dawson & Hjorth, 2012) can be effectively employed to deepen our understanding of performance of private family enterprises. Business historian Colli (2012) challenges researchers to think of performance as a plural rather than a singular construct. As if responding to this challenge in the very same issue, Berrone, Cruz, and Gomez-Mejia (2012) develop five dimensions of the socioemotional wealth construct developing indicators to measure each dimension. While these measures need to be validated and refined, this is an important step in this direction. For a list of validated measures in the field, see Pearson, Holt, and Carr (in press).

In addition to the overview and methods focused articles, several studies aimed to understand career growth and intentions in family firms appeared in this volume. Examples include a study on career trajectory of CEOs of large Italian family enterprises indicating several surprising findings (Salvato, Minichilli, & Piccarreta, 2012) and another on turnover intentions in family firms (Khanin, Turel, & Mahto, 2012).

For past few years, editorials of FBR have focused on topics addressing the art and craft of publishing in this journal. Examples include “strengthening your literature review” (Reuber, 2010), building theory (Reay & Whetten, 2011), and measurement issues (Pearson & Lumpkin, 2011). Two editorials in Volume 25 continued this series. Salvato and Aldrich (2012) reflect on how family business scholars could come up with interesting research questions, and Short (2012) comments on how best to deal with the revision wearing the robes of a defense attorney. Our aim is to continue strengthening the journal while keeping it agile to serve your needs. Thus, we welcome suggestions for topics to be covered in this editorial series.

The Next 25 Years

As we move into the next 25 years of FBR with this issue, what might we expect to see? Management luminaries interviewed by Craig and Salvato (2012) predict a bright future both for the field and for FBR. In the words of Mike Hitt:

Family business research is going to blossom! . . . It is blossoming right now and that will increase . . . the field is at a precipice of the next step . . . the future is very bright.

If you compare the progress with strategy, it took time, but when papers started to appear in broader discipline journals, people started to take notice. And this is somewhat the same for entrepreneurship currently. Quality research, no matter the discipline, will assist greatly in gaining legitimacy of the field, and that is achieved by broadening the conversation into these outlets. It is how Strategic Management Journal (SMJ) evolved into a premier journal. It did not start off that way but once papers were hitting AMJ, AMR, and Organization Science, SMJ was given a “lift along.” Arguably, FBR is in a similar position now. (Craig & Salvato, 2012, p. 113)

As more scholars begin to understand the prevalence and significance of family enterprises around the world, and the exciting context it offers to investigate a large plethora of challenging research questions, the volume and quality of research is likely to increase. More researchers joining the quest to build knowledge on family enterprises will mean more interest in publishing such research in FBR. This will likely further increase the demands of scientific rigor. While FBR’s reviewers and editors are well positioned to handle this demand and growth, together we will need to remain vigilant to ensure a strong link between research and practice is maintained—a strength our field has enjoyed throughout its evolution (Sharma, Hoy, Astrachan, & Koiranen, 2007).