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Family businesses (FBs) are considered an essential type of entrepreneurship that impacts economic growth. However, statistics show that after a period of performance they ultimately fail, and comparatively little is known about the reasons for their failing when compared to the amount of research focusing on keys to success.

Through the implementation of an case study technique, which is widely used in research to address the complex phenomenon of failure, this paper aims to analyse the antecedents of failure in the case of four Catalan FBs. In doing so, this article develops propositions based on Institutional Economics Theory and Dynamic Capability Theory, with a focus on innovation and product diversification in family firms.

Using interviews as a means of obtaining a large amount of information, it is observed that problems related to governmental regulations and constantly changing social behaviour can lead to failure for FBs. Additionally, a link between R&D activities and new product development and FB failure is observed. More specifically, this research highlights that a lack of product diversification and innovation can become a hindrance for FB performance when the institutional environment is unstable. It reveals the importance of developing dynamic capabilities that can meet the demands of fast-changing consumer behaviour. From a practical perspective, these findings can be used by governments in developing regulations focused on the dynamic capabilities of FBs, and by managers in order to learn from these experiences and implement appropriate strategies for long-term development and crisis management.

This paper theoretically contributes to both the FB literature, as well as to institutional economics and dynamic capability theories by offering a combined perspective on how FB's dynamic capabilities change based on environmental factors and impact FB failure.

This study sheds light on a hitherto understudied group in family business literature: widows. We explore the roles a widow may take following the unexpected death of her owner-manager spouse when she had no salient role in the business prior to the death.

We used a qualitative approach to research, to study inductively the roles considered and taken by three widows who unexpectedly succeeded as owners of Swedish privately held family firms. We conducted semi-structured interviews with widows and children in top management.

We construct a typology of four main roles a widow can take and analyse the underlying dimensions that they represent. We also analyse to which extent the choice of role widow can be explained by psychological ownership and double-loss theory. The typology can be used as a tool for family business owners and their advisors as the basis of an open and non-prejudiced discussion of the choices available to a widow.

We have investigated the factors that influence a widow's decision whether to take over the business or not, as suggested in previous research by, for example, Martinez et al. (2009). We explore the roles a widow can consider and adopt. The study advances our understanding of how businesses can remain as family firms also in the event of the unexpected death of an owner-manager (De Massis et al., 2008). We hereby contribute to the literature on sudden successions and on women in family businesses.

The field of scientific research on small and medium-sized family businesses has been growing exponentially and the aim of this paper is to systematize the body of knowledge to develop an agenda for the future.

Adopting comparative bibliometric analyses on 155 articles (from 1989 until 2018) the authors provide a systematic assessment of the scientific research about small family firms, unveiling the structure and evolution of the field. Bibliographic coupling, co-citation analysis and co-occurrence analysis are adopted to identify the most influential studies and themes.

Four clusters of research are reviewed: succession in family SMEs, performances of family SMEs, internationalization of family SMEs and organizational culture of family SMEs.

This paper contributes to the field of family SMEs by providing a systematic analysis of the scientific knowledge. Reviewing those clusters allows to providing avenues and reflections for future research and further practice.

The purpose of this study is to explore how the family firm identity is affected when it is no longer publicly communicated.

A case study approach was used to follow a third-generation family business, a large Swedish home electronics firm that acquired a competitor and, initially, continued using its family firm identity after the acquisition. This study longitudinally tracks the company and its owning family using archival data combined with interviews.

The case company decided to stop communicating their identity as a family business. Such a move initially appears counterintuitive, since it potentially threatens the family firm identity and leads the firm to forgo other advantages, e.g. in branding. However, the decision was based on arguments that were rational from a business perspective, leading to a decoupling of family and firm identity.

This study contributes to the literature by showing a decoupling of internally experienced and externally communicated identities. It further contributes to the understanding of the family firm identity concept.

This is an empirical study of family firm size, as measured by the number of employees, and the relationship of a firmʼs size to a variety of management activities, styles, and characteristics. A statistical analysis of data drawn from 159 American family businesses indicates significant differences by size with regard to the number of nonfamily members in top management, use of outside advisors, time spent engaged in strategic management, use of sophisticated methods of financial management, proportion of women family members involved in firm management, and level of conflict between family members. Implications are offered for family firm owner-managers, for those who assist such businesses, and for researchers in the field of family business.

This paper aims to explore the impact of brand authenticity dimensions (i.e. aesthetic, symbolism, heritage, originality, quality commitment and virtue) on consumer engagement in the context of social media. This study answers to the need of scholars to understand consumer behaviour towards family and non-family firms’ brand authenticity constructs and for practitioners to find the correct levers to increase consumer engagement.

Top 10 European family firms with a retrievable Facebook (FB) page from the Global Family Business Index have been selected. Then, the study analysed family firms’ social media consumer engagement versus their non-family business direct competitors on a sample of 21.664 FB posts over a four-year period, leveraging multi-group analysis.

The results outline that three out of six brand authenticity dimensions posted on FB are statistically arousing more interactions respect to non-authenticity-related contents when posted by family firms. However, there are no statistically significant findings when brand authenticity content is posted by the non-family competitors.

This research is helpful for practitioners and entrepreneurs who might want to strengthen their social media brand strategies. With this regard, the study provides insights on which elements of brand authenticity are perceived by consumers as more engaging and which levers to use when communicating the familiness of the company.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is one of the earliest studies crosscutting the family business and brand authenticity literature streams to conduct an empirical analysis based on official FB data with a data set of over 20,000 observations. Moreover, this study assesses that not every dimension of the brand authenticity construct is relevant in the context of social media and that its effectiveness depends on the firms’ familiness.