Editor’s Notes

Escalating Interest in Family Business Studies Globally

By the late 1990s, scholars from diverse disciplines using varied methodological approaches had unequivocally established that family businesses dominate the global economy (e.g., Heck & Trent, 1999; LaPorta, Lopez-de-Silanes, & Shleifer, 1999; Shanker & Astrachan, 1996). The impact of this foundational work is now acknowledged in respected business press outlets with statements as follows:

You can happily go through a day consuming nothing but the products of family concerns: reading the New York Times (or the Daily Mail), driving a BMW (or a Ford or a Fiat), making calls on your Samsung Galaxy, munching on Mars Bars, and watching Fox on your Comcast cable. And, the growth is likely to continue. McKinsey predicts that in 2025, family companies from the emerging world will account for 37% of all companies with annual revenues of more than 1 billion, up from 26% in 2010. (Economist, 2014, p. 13)

Scholarly research on family business continues to accelerate at an exponential pace. This is evidenced by the search of full-text, peer-reviewed articles using the term family business in the ABI Inform Global ² (Figure 1). While there were only 111 articles on family business before January 1, 1970, the decade of the 1970s added 135; and the 1980s added another 306 articles to this growing literature. The pace of family business knowledge creation accelerated in the 1990s as a whopping 2,281 articles appeared in peer-reviewed journals. And 5,654 more were added in the first decade of this century. With 4,021 new family business articles finding their way into this database during in the 2010 to 2014 time frame, there appears to be no slowing down of this field of study. With the growth of interest in family business research, it is no surprise that there is a rising trend of interesting submissions to FBR from around the world. This issue is a good example as research from Austria, Australia, France, Israel, and the United Kingdom appears in it.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Number of full-text, peer-reviewed articles on “family business” in the ABI Inform Global database.

Unique Positioning of FBR in the Growing Field

Established in 1988, FBR was the first scholarly journal to focus solely on family business research. It has published between 17 and 21 articles annually. While two thirds of all family business research in the late 1980s appeared in FBR, providing foundational knowledge in the field, there has been a continuous decline in this proportion over the years. In 2014, for example, FBR published a mere 2% of scholarly research on family businesses, while the remainder found its way to the pages of other outlets including many premier journals in management, business, finance, and family studies. Craig, Moores, Howorth, and Poutziouris (2009) tracked the appearance of family business research in top-tier journals that featured most prominently in the Journal Quality List compiled by Harzing (2008), and concluded that the field had reached a “tipping point.” In 2012, Gedajlovic, Carney, Chrisman, and Kellermanns’s review further reinforced the continuing trend of the appearance of family business research in premier management journals (e.g., Chrisman & Patel, 2012; König, Kammerlander, & Enders, 2013; Patel & Chrisman, 2014). Amid this growth, FBR has retained its anchoring position in family business studies with its enhanced rigor, reach, and relevance. When it comes to a journal’s impact, age matters, ³ particularly when combined with accelerated growth of a field and increase in the number of well-trained and dedicated scholars engaged in related research. Those who have witnessed the growth of other scholarly fields point to the unique positioning of this journal. For example, in an interview for the 25th anniversary issue of FBR, Mike Hitt noted,

Family business as a research pursuit is changing . . . it is blossoming right now and that will increase . . . the field is at a precipice of the next step . . . the future is very bright.

Family business studies have been published more broadly now (not only in entrepreneurship but also in management and social science journals) which serves as delivering legitimacy to the field.

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. (Mike Hitt in Craig & Salvato, 2012, p. 113)

Special Issues of Notable Journals on Family Business Research

The inaugural co-editors of FBR set to establish a unique field of study that addresses the dilemmas of leaders and managers of family enterprises. In their quest to establish a broad enough territory that would support the professional needs of enterprising families and the intellectual curiosity of diverse scholars from multiple disciplines, they used special issues to broaden the topical horizons of family business research (Lansberg & Gersick, 1993). The tradition of special issues continues to date not only at FBR but also at other notable journals eager to support the development of research on the most dominant form of organizations. Over forty special issues on family business research have appeared since 2003, seven in 2014 itself! And, several others are currently in progress.

The topical issues of FBR in 2014 seemed to follow both planned and emergent paths (cf. Mintzberg & Waters, 1985). We had planned two special issues focused on ‘temporal dimensions in family enterprise research’ (Sharma, Salvato & Reay, 2014), and ‘social issues related to the family enterprise’ (Van Gils, Dibrell, Neubaum & Craig, 2014). Topics covered in the temporal dimensions issue ranged from developing a measure for long-term orientation, to, understanding the temporal influences on the ambidexterity of family firms, and evolution of family firms pro-activeness over time. The topics on social issues that appeared in the September 2014 issue of FBR ranged from corporate social engagement, to, sustainability certification, and family firm philanthropy. The June 2014 issue had a large focus on internationalization including a review article by Pukall & Calabrò (2014), and the December 2014 issue presented research at the interface of finance and family business including an editorial on this topic by Voordeckers, Le Breton-Miller and Miller (2014).

FBR Team: Authors, Reviewers, and Editors

The quality of a peer-reviewed journal such as FBR relies on three equally important stakeholder groups: (a) the authors who target the journal and devote efforts to develop their work in accordance with its expectations ⁴ ; (b) reviewers who not only provide their expert assessment to the editor that shapes the decision but also provide constructive guidance to authors on strengths and flaws in their manuscript. The best reviewers ⁵ distinguish themselves from others by separating the major issues from minor ones and providing some ideas on how the identified problems might be addressed; (c) editors who read the entire package—submission and the reviews, and then devote efforts to provide clear guidance to the authors. Although the editors know the identity of both the authors and the reviewers, the best editors find the strength and courage to retain their focus on the manuscript and its ideas without being swayed by the identity or personality of the individual(s) behind the writing. FBR is extremely fortunate to have deep bench strength in all three stakeholder groups.

Over the years, we have found ways to honor the best of the best through two awards that are presented at the annual conference of the Family Firm Institute. Once again, this year we identified high-quality articles and reviewers.

SAGE and FFI: FBR’s Publisher and Owner

The founders of FBR were very thoughtful and strategic in their choice of publisher and this foundation continues. Over the years, FBR has been published by Jossey-Bass, Blackwell, Wiley-Blackwell, and since 2009 is in the highly capable charge of SAGE. This professionalism shows in the high integrity and efficiency with which articles submitted to FBR are treated. In 2014, SAGE appointed a peer review editor to FBR. Every manuscript submitted to FBR is subjected to a thorough Google search, which is then followed by an iThenticate check if warranted. Furthermore, authors are asked to verify if another version of the submitted manuscript is available online, in print, or under publication consideration at another outlet. These additional steps have alleviated the pressure from our editors and reviewers to detect such transgressions while focusing on their core task of maintaining the rigor and integrity of the journal. Unfortunately, the desk rejects have increased particularly as we are going through the educational process of the degree to which the new submissions must be different from other published or available works. As desk rejects at FBR are pretty quick and developmental, it is our hope that over time we will see a downturn of these outcomes. On an average, articles accepted in FBR in 2014 appeared online in 23 days, further confirming the diligence of SAGE. The Family Firm Institute and SAGE work together to maintain FBR’s quality and ensure that the research published therein is disseminated widely to the scholarly and the practitioner communities.

The Year Ahead: A Sneak Preview

Twelve articles are currently available “OnLineFirst FBR.” No special issues are planned for 2015, so these accepted articles and many others near acceptance will appear in issues this year. Work will continue on the First Special Review Issue of FBR to be released in March 2016. Topical, methodological, theoretical, and geographical diversity continues to be seen in the articles accepted for FBR.

To cope with the expected continued growth of FBR, our editorial team has been expanded from 10 to 11 members, with the addition of another associate editor. We will continue to monitor the number of submissions and add members to our team to ensure high-quality editorial decisions continue and the editors’ workload remains manageable.

FBR devotes significant efforts to disseminate research published in its pages into the family business advisory and practitioner communities. Since 2012, a member of our editorial team, Karen Vinton, has been devoting her entire efforts toward this end. Once an article is accepted for publication in FBR, she prepares a practitioner friendly executive summary and where appropriate interviews the author(s) for a podcast. Our experience, over the past 2 years, has revealed that splitting the knowledge production and dissemination functions works well for us. We are encouraged by the increasing download numbers of podcasts and executive summaries (Table 1) as they are a potent signal of the impact of these efforts.

With this issue, we are excited to introduce a new “Research Applied Board” (RAB). Members of this board will support the research dissemination efforts of our editorial team. We are delighted and humbled that several luminaries of our field who are deeply aware of the realities of family business leaders and well familiar with academic research have agreed to contribute to these efforts. Our ambition is to ensure that the findings from rigorous research published in FBR are disseminated effectively and efficiently into the practitioner communities. Toward this end, with the help of our RAB, we intend to devote a multi-pronged effort in 2015.

In short, the field of family business studies continues to grow at an escalating pace and FBR is positioned extremely well as the leading edge journal in this field. Our editorial team remains grateful for the trust authors place in FBR and scholars who generously share their time and expertise to help us make the best decisions possible. Together, let us give it our all to maintain the rigor, relevance, and reach of FBR and continue building knowledge that helps us understand and deal with the unique dilemmas of family enterprises around the world.