Abstract
In February 2017, the Family Firm Institute’s Board of Directors announced G. Tyge Payne as the incoming editor of Family Business Review (FBR) with June 2018 as his first issue of responsibility. He would be the sixth editor of this journal after Ivan Lansberg, Kelin Gersick, Max Wortman, Joe Astrachan, and, most recently, Pramodita Sharma, who was stepping off after 9 years (2009-2017). As we had worked together on the FBR editorial team since July 2013, when Tyge became an associate editor, the transition between us had a “peaceful easy feeling” to it. As this issue is the joint responsibility of us both, this editorial allows Dita to reflect on the past 9 years of FBR, while Tyge provides a brief look to the future.
Looking Back
The year 2017 continued to reinforce the anchoring position of FBR in family business studies. Key metrics and trends of FBR are summarized in Table 1 and indicate a strong, stable journal that is widely read and supported by a dedicated and growing community of scholars. Among the various metrics, we note that (1) the year closed with 268 submissions (up from previous years), (2) average turnaround time from reviewers was 20 days, and (3) average days from submission to final decision was 35 days. We thank each and every colleague who generously gave us their time and expertise, and placed trust in us with their work. A journal is a community effort, and FBR has been blessed with exceptional support of the scholarly community. Thank you!
FBR Key Stats (2009-2017).
Number includes 7 and 1 commentaries for 2009 and 2010, respectively. bTwo special issues were finalized in 2013 boosting the acceptance rate for that year. cFrom submission to final decision, including desk rejects.
Editorial Team and Review Boards
We want to express special thanks to the following scholars who collectively invested 85 years of their professional lives to serve on the FBR editorial team in the last 9 years (2009-2017).
Pascual Berrone (2 years)
Keith Brigham (1 year, continuing)
Jon Carr (4 years, continuing)
Ron Chenail (2 years)
Justin Craig (8 years)
Josh Daspit (1 year, continuing)
Alfredo De Massis (1 year, continuing)
W. Gibb Dyer Jr. (2 years)
Daniel Holt (3 years, continuing)
Nadine Kammerlander (2 years, continuing)
Franz Kellermanns (4 years)
Alessandro Minichilli (2 years)
Tyge Payne (4 years, continuing)
Allison Pearson (7 years, continuing)
Trish Reay (5 years)
Becky Reuber (6 years)
Carlo Salvato (6 years)
Pramodita Sharma (9 years)
Jeremy Short (2 years)
Ritch Sorenson (2 years)
Karen Vinton (5 years)
Wim Voordeckers (5 years, continuing)
Justin Webb (2 years)
As noted, this journey continues for several of them, while several new members recently joined the team. New editorial team members include Don Neubaum (Senior Associate Editor), Cristina Cruz (Associate Editor), and Peter Jaskiewicz (Associate Editor). The combining of experienced and new editors should allow for a great deal of continuity, yet allow for new ideas and initiatives to emerge as well.
We also wish to recognize 10 scholars who served as Special Issue coeditors during this time frame: Michael Carney, Jim Chrisman, Clay Dibrell, Eileen Fischer, Kelin Gersick, Tom Lumpkin, Ken Moores, Don Neubaum, Jeremy Short, and Anita Van Gils. Typically, these experts were joined by members of the editorial team to edit these issues, with the most recent topics being process and variance methods (2017), social issues (2014), and temporal dimensions (2014). 1 Furthermore, the Advisory Editorial and Research Applied Boards were instrumental in providing support to the FBR editorial team, including important networking and dissemination activities.
It was in 2009 that FBR held its first “boards and authors” meeting as a Monday breakfast event during the Academy of Management (AoM) conference. Initially, this meeting involved board members and best paper winners, but has since been expanded to include authors of articles published or accepted for publication in the previous year. Since 2016, we have also held an editorial team retreat at this venue. Both initiatives have become well-attended traditions of the journal that we hope to carry forward in years to come. We also organized smaller meetings with editors at other conferences where researchers gathered in substantial numbers. In all cases, we are actively looking for ways to improve processes, increase quality of articles, and make the journal content more visible and accessible to family business scholars and practitioners across the globe.
Awards
The annual FBR Best Paper 2 and Best Reviewer Awards, launched in 2009, are presented at the annual conference of the Family Firm Institute. These awards are now announced at the FBR Breakfast Meeting during the AoM conference. Members of the Advisory Board typically serve on the Best Paper committee, while the editorial team selects the winners of the Reviewer Awards.
This year, we recognized two exceptional qualitative articles as award winners: Meier and Schier (2016) won the Best Paper award, while De Massis, Kotlar, Frattini, Chrisman, and Nordqvist (2016) earned an Honorable Mention. These articles join a diverse group of studies written by authors from all over the world on a wide variety of research topics and styles (see Table 2). We also recognized the best reviewers for their tremendous efforts. The Outstanding Reviewer Award recognizes the one person that stood out among the others, while the Excellent Reviewer Awards are for those few that were also exceptional. This year’s overall winner was Josip Kotlar; the 2017 Excellent Reviewers are shown, along with the many other best reviewer award winners from past years, in Table 3.
FBR Best Article Awards (2008-2016).
Note. Winners are in bold and honorable mentions are in regular font.
FBR Best Review Award Winners (2009-2017).
Moving On
If the best predictor of future performance is past performance, then we are optimistic about the future of FBR. Indeed, in a typical family business tradition, we hope to leverage our past successes to help us continue to expand our status and reputation within the scholarly business community. That said, while there is general growth in the field, there is also a notable increase in the number of opportunities to publish family business research in alternative outlets. Therefore, we intend to continue to produce high-quality articles that are beneficial to both scholars and practitioners, but look for opportunities through which we can enhance our utility to not only serve our core set of readers but also those that may be beyond the normal boundaries of the field. For instance, Holt, Pearson, Payne, and Sharma (2018) highlight how family business research might not only borrow from, but also contribute to, a broader set of management subdisciplines (e.g., human resources, social issues), other business disciplines (e.g., accounting, marketing), and nonbusiness social sciences (e.g., family science, human development, psychology, sociology).
One key practice that we intend to perpetuate is our production of high-quality special issues; over the years, special issues have allowed us to make major headways to expand the field in terms of theory, empirics, and phenomena. As can be seen with this issue (March 2018), we are continuing forward with Special Review Issues. This issue holds the Second Biennial Special Review Issue of FBR, and we have already announced the third edition of the Special Review Issue, which is slated for 2020. Also, a special issue of FBR focused on “Typologies and Taxonomies of Family Businesses” has already been launched, with plans to publish these articles in 2019. For future special topic issues, there will be an open call for proposals coming this Spring. Ideally, future special issues continue to provide not only high-quality and impactful research but also expand our boundaries in terms of scholarship and readership.
In addition to the special issues mentioned above, a very special set of articles is scheduled for the next issue (June 2018). These articles are “reflection” pieces by some of the most well-known and high-cited authors in the family business domain. These scholars reflect on the past, but also point to many new and interesting opportunities for the future.
Overall, we are enlivened by a smooth editorial transition and encouraged by the opportunities that exist for the future of FBR and the field of family business.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We are grateful for the thoughtful comments from Keith Brigham, Alfredo De Massis, Peter Jaskiewicz, Nadine Kammerlander, Allison Pearson, and Wim Voordeckers on earlier versions of this editorial.