Publicado 03-09-2010
"Long Term Perspectives on Family Business"
Family firms are economically significant throughout the world in both developed and developing countries. Many of the longest surviving firms are family businesses that continue to be owned and managed by the family many generations after foundation. Family firms can be small, medium or large and have been significant over the last 250 years. Family business scholarship has developed in parallel silos with business historians and management and entrepreneurship scholars having only passing appreciation of each other's work.
Business historians began writing case studies of family firms from the 1950s onwards and from the 1980s, especially following the International Economic History Congress in Budapest in 1982, debate focused around the position of family business in economic and business development. The importance of family business during early industrialisation proved fairly uncontroversial, but as the business history agenda increasingly hinged around the rise of complex corporations and the work of Alfred D Chandler, debate shifted increasingly towards the role of 'personal capitalism' in economic decline. Growing evidence that scholars had undervalued the role and capabilities of family firms was a primary stimulus to a new body of research around international comparisons of family firms which was first articulated in the 1993 Special Issue of Business History, edited by Geoffrey Jones and Mary Rose. Subsequent research shows litle historical evidence behind the notion of the family firm as a stage in the shift from traditional to corporate capitalism and instead shows that family firms are shaped by forces which vary through time, by sector and internationally.
The development of family business research by management and entrepreneurship scholars has taken place largely along a parallel track and was marked in the 1980s by the launch of the Family Business Review and more recently through a series of special issues in the Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice. A recent study concluded that while there had been rigorous theoretic treatment of family firm performance, internal organisation had been neglected.
This special issue offers the opportunity to consider long term perspectives on family businesses by spanning and drawing together the streams of literature in business history and family business research. Theory can be interpreted through a historical lens and differing theories can be applied to historical approaches to family business. A historical lens helps explain why some family businesses have survived across generations. Innovation, continuity and change are all important. Successful family firms may build on what has gone before in a series of incremental innovations. Iconic, enduring brands can be sustained by process innovation. Papers should balance historical context and methodology with the sustained application of theory. Potential themes include:
Analysis of family firms in differing national, regional and international contexts; such studies could include either qualitative research or quantitative studies involving the building and analysis of databases.
Application of theories based on history (eg path dependency,path creation, resource-based theory and core-competencies approaches) to family business.
Impact of time, place and local cultural patterns on family business behaviour.
Succession and survival of family firms through time; such studies would also focus on the source and analysis of blunders.
Explanations of differing internal organisation of family businesses.
All articles will be between 6,000 and 8,000 words, including notes.
In the first instance, authors should send a proposal of not more than 500 words to the three guest editors before 1st September 2010, preferably by email:
Andrea Colli andrea.colli unibocconi.it
Mary Rose m.roselancaster.ac.uk
Carole Howorth c.howorthlancaster.ac.uk
More information:
www.lums.lancs.ac.uk/entrep/profiles/mary-rose
Institute for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Lancaster University Management School
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YX
Innov-ex 11 12-13 April 2011 www.innovation-for-extremes.net
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