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This study aims to contribute to the academic disciplines of entrepreneurship and management by developing a new theory that explains Founder-CEOs’ succession in family and non-family firms. Many scholars failed to generate a specific theory to describe the succession of Founder-CEOs. Family firms remain complex enterprises comprising interconnectedness of cultural interests in which corporate governance occurs by families, Founder-CEOs and sometimes a board of directors.

This study’s design/methodology/approach reflects post-modernist epistemological and ontological perspectives for conducting systematic literature reviews. To identify relevant studies in the review, the several databases (Australian Business Dean’s Council Journal Quality List; EBSCO Database, including PsycINFO and Psych studies; Web of Science) and a mix of ranked journals from entrepreneurship, management and psychology were used.

The findings and results in this paper reflect the purpose, methodology and literature analysis culminating in 1,582 peer-reviewed studies. A total of 182 peer-reviewed studies met the criterion for review. Throughout the research process, a systematic literature review uncovered management literature gaps overlooked for decades during the theory-building process. Hence, developing a theory of Founder-CEOs succession used a combination of systematic, inductive, comparative and interactive approaches.

A Theory of Founder-CEOs Succession explains the strategic process of replacing a founder systematically. The promotion of, and incentives for, internal executives have been topics of great interest and deliberation among scholars and practitioners for a long time. This study contributes research implications for theory building in the academic disciplines of entrepreneurship and management by offering scholars and practitioners a theory that does not exist to describe Founder-CEOs’ succession encompassing both strategic successes and failures. By incorporating successes and failures, this study provides realistic reflections of Founder-CEOs.

The widespread family businesses play an important role in the national economy of developed countries in Europe and North America, or of developing countries in East Asia. However, family business succession is a worldwide difficult problem. The innovative family business succession practices of Robert Bosch GmbH, the German family company which has a history of 130 years (1886-2016), basically follow the trend of evolving from family businesses to social enterprises after further socialization. However, it has its own innovation and uniqueness which is worthy of reference by Chinese family businesses.

The purpose of this study is to look at the structure of the interactions between the board of directors’ chairman qualities such as chairman independence, tenure, ethnicity, age- and impression management (IM).

The research population consists of non-financial Malaysian companies listed on Bursa Malaysia’s Main Market, using data gathered via annual reports and DataStream. The study relies on the ordinary least square regression to test the direct relationships between the directors’ chairman characteristics and IM. Moreover, robustness and sensitivity tests were used to examine the effectiveness of chairman characteristics with IM. Furthermore, the results rely on the FGLS regression as an additional test. The study found that chairman independence, chairman ethnicity and chairman age have a significant impact on IM.

The results reveal that chairman independence has a negative association with qualitative IM (IMSC1). Moreover, chairman ethnicity has a positively significant relationship with qualitative IM (IMSC1) and quantitative IM (IMSC2). Also, the effectiveness of chairman characteristics has a negative and significant association with IMSC1.

The primary goal of this paper is to fill a gap in the literature and to open up opportunities for more in-depth research on the subject. So far, there has been no research into the impact of the board chairman’s (BC) personality on IM. This study serves as a warning to policymakers, businesses and their stakeholders, as well as researchers, about the importance of BC characteristics, which may impede the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanisms. The paper provides a framework for investigating these characteristics in the context of IM.

This study aims to identify the updated areas in family business innovation (FBI) and propose a future research agenda for scholars in the domain.

Using VOSviewer and Bibliometrix-R, this study conducts a bibliometric analysis on 699 Scopus-indexed journal articles/reviews to analyse FBI’s performance and intellectual structure.

This study provides up-to-date assessment through performance analysis. Through the co-citation, co-word and thematic evolution analysis, this study unpacks FBI themes/topics to propose possible future avenues.

The findings provide insights into resilient innovation-driven family businesses to enlighten the next generation of family business leaders with essential innovation knowledge for sustainable growth.

This study complements past FBI reviews by offering renewed perspectives that future research can focus on, in turn, enhancing literature on contemporary, relevant topical issues in the FBI post-COVID-19 pandemic.

The study aspires to enhance comprehension of the intricate interplay between supply chain management (SCM) and resilience in family businesses, thereby offering valuable insights to managers and policymakers endeavouring to foster resilience in uncertain environments.

Commencing from the premise that family businesses (FBs) prioritize the preservation of socio-emotional wealth (SEW) when formulating strategic decisions, this study endeavours to advance understanding of supply chain practices adopted by FBs and their direct impact on resilience during crisis situations or economically challenging periods. Through an exploratory case study of nine FBs, the present research reveals four pivotal strategies in SCM that contribute to their resilience: (i) reorganization of inventory management; (ii) cultivating close relationships with suppliers; (iii) emphasizing product quality and customer retention; and (iv) implementing cost reduction measures to bolster resilience. The aim of the study is to provide an in-depth understanding of the intricate interplay between SCM and resilience in FBs, thereby offering valuable insights to managers and policymakers endeavouring to foster resilience in uncertain environments.

Our approach offers a theoretical framework for SCM aligned with prior research on the interplay between characteristics of family businesses and resilience strategies. Furthermore, this paper illustrates how factors such as the emphasis on high-quality products and services by family businesses contribute to achieving non-economic objectives that owners adopt to reconcile family and business needs, creating intrinsic added value for the company. It reveals various challenges in SCM, including inventory organization changes, supplier closures and the significance of customer retention. Family businesses are implementing product and technology enhancements and leveraging digitization to enhance supply chain processes.

This paper contributes significantly to the field of FBs by highlighting the crucial role of SCM in enhancing business resilience during crises. It empirically examines how the SEW characteristics of FBs influence the reconfiguration of their supply chains to enhance resilience, presenting a theoretical model for this context. Our theoretical framework employs an SEW perspective to elucidate how FBs respond to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic by adapting their SCM processes to safeguard their social and emotional legitimacy, organizational visibility and reputation. These adaptations gain particular relevance during crises or turbulent conditions, potentially leading to alterations in how FBs formulate their supply chain strategies and manage supply chain-related processes.

This study aims to investigate whether auditors compromise their independence for economically important clients in family business settings.

The authors empirically examine the research question based on China for the years 2011 to 2020. The dependent variable is the auditors’ propensity to issue modified audit opinions, which is a proxy for auditor independence. The authors use relative client audit fees as a proxy for client importance. To address endogeneity issues in the selection of family firms, the authors use the two-stage least squares regression model and, subsequently, the propensity score matching and Hausman firm fixed effect modeling.

This study reveals that the propensity to issue modified audit opinions is positively correlated with client importance. Big-N auditors are more likely to issue modified audit opinions for their economically important family firm clients, whereas such evidence is not found for non-Big-N auditors. Results are consistent and robust to endogeneity test and sensitivity analysis.

This study enriches the literature on auditor independence and the effect of family firms’ ownership structure factors on audit reporting behavior for their economically important clients. Findings may prove useful for managers and practitioners interested in family business.

This paper studies the impact of different chief executive officer (CEO) succession strategies on consumer evaluation of family firms. CEO succession is critical for family firms as improper succession planning has been shown to be the primary reason for high mortality rates of such firms. Furthermore, the choice of CEO (internal vs external) by family firms can send different signals to stakeholders and thereby impact their appraisal of such firms.

In this paper, the authors use an experiment-based approach to test how the type of CEO succession (internal vs external) influences the consumer's evaluation of family firms.

The authors find that appointing an internal CEO leads to higher perception of firm capability, trust towards the firm and more favorable consumer attitudes. All these factors, in turn, lead to higher purchase intentions. External CEOs in family firms do not seem to have any de facto advantage regarding perceptions of higher capability.

Thus, the authors contribute to the literature of family firms by showing how family firm's strategic decisions during succession can affect consumer behavior.

This study aims to examine the effect of board gender diversity on corporate litigation in China’s listed firms. The key questions this study addresses are: what are the effect of board gender diversity on corporate litigation in terms of both the frequency and severity of consequence, is there any heterogeneous effects of the relationships across firm performance?

A sample consists of 25,668 firm-year observations from over 3,340 firms is examined using logistic regression analysis and negative binomial regression analysis. The authors also use event study method and ordinary least square (OLS) regression to explore female directors’ effects on reducing the negative consequences of litigation. The logistic regression and OLS regression are reestimated with interaction terms when examining the firm performance heterogeneity.

The authors document that firms with greater female representation on their boards experience fewer and less severe corporate litigations. Moreover, in high-performing firms, board gender diversity plays a more potent role in reducing the frequency and consequences of corporate litigation than low-performing firms.

This study is among the first to examine the relationship between board gender diversity and the comprehensive corporate litigations under Chinese context. It sheds new light on China’s boardroom dynamics, offering valuable empirical implication to Chinese corporate policymakers on the role of female directors.

This project aims to examine how entrepreneurial orientation and succession planning among Palestinian family businesses positively affects their associated growth potential, considering the mediating role of innovation and the moderation effect of geographic location. Leveraging ethnic entrepreneurship theory, the authors compare these types of enterprises in the USA with their counterparts in Palestine.

This cross-sectional quantitative research analyzes data collected from October through December 2022. 180 Palestinian family-owned firms completed a survey; 90 companies were located in Palestine, while the other 90 were in the USA. Structural equation modeling analysis was conducted using Smart-PLS4. The interrelations of the conceptual framework were examined via path analysis and bootstrapping techniques.

The authors found a statistically significant positive effect of entrepreneurial orientation on Palestinian family business growth; the authors’ results concurrently indicated succession planning did not affect growth within the authors’ selected population. The authors also discovered innovation mediates the relationship between orientation and growth, and business location appears to moderate this relationship. The authors’ research indicates geography appears to favor Palestinian family-owned companies in the USA, where the authors found opportunity-driven immigrant entrepreneurs benefit from the structured business systems in a highly-developed country.

Given the current situation in Palestine, it is essential to understand the potential contribution that Palestinian family-owned businesses globally can make to reconstruct the country’s local economy. The next few years will be critical in figuring out how innovative thinking can boost the region’s recovery and increase Palestinian-based family companies’ ability to engage in sustainable entrepreneurship with reinvestment support from its diaspora. Therefore, it is important to have research that identifies factors that could improve these businesses’ continued performance and growth potential. This study also aids in further understanding the defining characteristics of Palestinian-owned family firms, enhancing general theories related to entrepreneurship among ethnic and diasporic groups.

Family businesses play a pivotal role in the world’s economy, contributing to 70% of its GDP. Their success in the current environment demands the enactment of entrepreneurial and innovative competencies to catalyse organizational growth and performance. In this context, corporate entrepreneurship may help these organizations advance their competitive advantage. The systematic analysis of the past 50 years of research reveals that a broad range of variables may moderate relationships among antecedents, outcomes and corporate entrepreneurship. This article aims to explore future avenues of research that will contribute to a better understanding of corporate entrepreneurship in family firms.

This paper is based on the systematic research.

While the synergy between corporate entrepreneurship and family business has gained attention, the intricacies and nuances within this intersection remain largely unexplored due to the diverse nature of corporate entrepreneurship and family enterprises. Future research endeavours in this domain should aim to explore fundamental aspects, including refining the definition of corporate entrepreneurship, understanding its interplay with familiness, socioemotional wealth, national and organizational culture and other various family-related factors such as the composition of the top management team, organizational size, diversity and attitudes towards risk.

By outlining the key variables such as familiness, socioemotional wealth, generational involvement and cultural factors, the paper guides future research efforts. Researchers and practitioners can use these identified variables as focal points for deeper investigation and analysis when exploring the dynamics of corporate entrepreneurship within family businesses.

Family firm managers may apply instruments like the Corporate Entrepreneurship Assessment Instrument together with other instruments like the Family Influence Familiness Scale (FIFS) and the FIBER instrument to obtain an indication of a firm’s likelihood of being able to successfully implement an entrepreneurial climate within the firm.

Family businesses represent 70% of the world’s GDP, therefore, improving the understanding of how corporate entrepreneurship augments their resilience and competitiveness, may contribute to the well-being of 60% of the global workforce.

The paper synthesizes the research in corporate entrepreneurship in family businesses and proposes a future perspective.