A Survey of Asian Family Business Research*

Abstract

We survey the literature on family firms with a focus on Asian countries. We begin with identifying three key motivational drivers of international research on family business—their dominance, relative performance, and extent of family embeddedness in the business. Second, we provide a brief survey of family firms in eight Asian economies with a focus on the history and current challenges faced by family firms in each country. Third, we document the variety of family firm definitions used in the literature and the resulting difficulty in drawing inferences due to a lack of definitional consistency. Fourth, we discuss the strategic advantages family assets such as legacy and networks bring to family firms in the Asian context. Fifth, we identify some unique challenges family firms face in their countries, and provide examples of how ownership and succession structures mitigate these challenges. We close this survey by suggesting some open research questions relevant for Asian family firms.