Accumulating Knowledge Over Time: Introduction to the Fourth FBR Review Issue

Abstract

We are honored to present the fourth Review Issue of Family Business Review (FBR). In 2016, FBR Editors Jeremy C. Short, Pramodita Sharma, Thomas Lumpkin, and Allison W. Pearson launched a series of special issues in FBR to track and understand the fast evolution of family business research produced since the early 1970s. With more than 2,000 family business articles published in the 1990s (Sharma, 2015), and more than 4,000 articles published between 2010 and 2014, they anticipated that the 2020s “would likely yield over 8,000 new peer-reviewed journal articles on family business” (Short et al., 2016, p. 11). Based on the Scopus database at the time we write this editorial (January 2022), we now found 20,041 document results containing the keyword “family business.” Clearly, as it stands, scholarly production on the subject has further grown, accelerating even beyond those ambitious expectations made just 5 years ago. This fast-growing trend raised the need to organize an increasingly diversified body of knowledge and shape the production of new knowledge in a way that adds and extends on what has been done before, to ultimately favor knowledge accumulation. Looking back to the previous FBR Review Issues offers us a privileged opportunity to reflect on the collective contribution that this stream of work has generated so far. Indeed, by screening and comparing the past FBR Review Issues, we found a wealth of interesting insights that we believe can yield precious directions for the future. In the editorial article of the inaugural FBR Special Issue, the Editors found indications that research on “family business is on the threshold of its next era” (Short et al., 2016, p. 12). The review articles contained in that issue outlined several promising directions to further and enrich family business scholarship, and the Editors further pointed to the promise of further reviews that look, for example, into specific methods and theories used in family business research, as well as cross-disciplinary approaches that bridge family business research with other fields such as family sciences, history, sociology, religious studies, anthropology, and psychology. Articles in this first FBR Review Issue elaborate on topics such as succession, philanthropy, governance from an agencyand steward-based perspective, exploration and exploitation, entrepreneurship, and empirical trends in family firm research. In the second FBR Review Issue, Editors Daniel T. Holt, Allison W. Pearson, Tyge Payne, and Pramodita Sharma continued to build on this legacy (Holt et al., 2018), placing their attention to the opportunities for cross-pollination between family business scholarship and the broadly diversified domains of management research. In a sense, this Editorial article captures the growing interest of family business researchers to move from the sidelines to a more central and foundational position in mainstream management research, offering several promising ways to fulfill this ambition. In this issue, (family business) literature on nonfamily members in family firms, advising, the institutional context and socioemotional wealth is reviewed. Finally, in the third FBR Review Issue, Editors Peter Jaskiewicz, Donald O. Neubaum, Alfredo De Massis, and Daniel T. Holt started to portrait an “adulthood” phase in family business research (Jaskiewicz et al., 2020). They found evidence that the field had matured, gained legitimacy, such as the growing adoption of mainstream theories born in other disciplines as well as building new “indigenous” theories of the family firm that can inform broader management debates. Interestingly, research focus shifted from the family business perspective (as in 1083075 FBRXXX10.1177/08944865221083075Family Business ReviewBrigham et al. research-article2022