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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.

Family businesses require internal communication (IC) to guide and provide direction, and the unique nature of involving both family and nonfamily employees add complexity. Navigating this complexity helps to ensure effective direction and management of family businesses. This paper explores the existing research concerning IC within family businesses and discusses the lenses and contexts through which it is commonly studied.

This paper provides a concise literature review to identify the most common lenses through which IC in family business has been researched.

IC in family enterprises is mostly studied through the lenses of IC between family generations, IC and the influence on family identity, and IC in times of crises. Existing research is largely focused on the role of family in IC, and limited consideration is given to the role of nonfamily members and family members outside of the business.

The paper synthesizes the direction and findings of existing research into IC within family business and provides avenues for future research. Managerial implications are also presented based on the synthesis of existing literature.

The primary aim is to renew academic discourse on financial education in business families. It emphasizes the need for effective financial literacy programs to foster a healthier relationship with money, addressing both technical aspects of finance and its psychological and relational impacts among family members.

This perspective article explores the impact of money education within business families. It discusses the psychological effects of money education on family dynamics and decision-making in family businesses. The research draws on previous studies, surveys and practical examples to highlight the importance of financial education and its implications on family and business sustainability.

Financial education is essential in business families as it enables more meaningful discussions on money and wealth, fostering informed decisions and decreasing conflict. Yet, it is often overlooked. There is a need for academic research into effective strategies for financial education for family members and the effects of financial literacy, or its absence, on various aspects of the business and the family system. The article presents a selection of pertinent questions for future research in this domain.

This article contributes to the family business field by underscoring the gap in scholarly research on money education within family businesses. It advocates for comprehensive financial education strategies that balance technical knowledge with an understanding of the psychological and relational aspects of money.

The purpose is to provide a brief summary on the current research development regarding the role of in-laws in family firms’ continuity. Additionally, I provide a perspective on the trends on the research regarding the in-laws involvement and influence in preparing future generations of family firms’ owners/managers. At the end, I conclude on what should be the relevant issues to be explored and researched in the future.

In this paper, I review the literature on the role of in-laws on the family business continuity, particularly, I emphasize the involvement of in-laws in family firms. I found that this topic of family business continuity has not widely researched and the role of in-laws on the future of the family firm has been underestimated in the extant literature. I provide a brief summary on the trends related the involvement of in-laws in the family business continuity and, at the end, I give my conclusions on what should be a research agenda regarding this topic.

Despite previous research, the question of the role of in-laws in family firms remains unanswered from the business-owning family perspective, nor from the in-laws’ perspective. The previous research has raised more questions on this topic. Clearly, the research landscape is vast, and scholars’ callings to find better ways to identify family members are totally justifiable.

Based on the literature review, it can be argued that one of the topics with high potential for future research and development is related to the role of in-laws in the family business continuity, either because they are passively included as part of the family group, without acknowledgment on their involvement or because governance policies have formally excluded them. In this review, I highlight the influence of the in-laws in the family business continuity; particularly, their role in preparing future generations of family firms owners/managers and imprinting them with the family values, culture and believes.

This perspective article aims to summarise the understanding of the link between regional development and family business and explore potential pathways for further investigations.

This study employed a scoping review methodology which attempts to explore a new topic of study and unveil its main concepts and relationships.

This study emphasises the need to enhance the cross-fertilisation of knowledge to bridge the gap between studies on regional development and family business. In addition to the traditional research pathways towards discerning the impact of formal and informal institutional contexts and economic and geographical locations on family business behaviour and performance, this perspective article encourages future researchers to delve into the regional-level mechanisms through which family businesses can influence and contribute to regional economic and social outcomes.

This perspective study employs a context theorising lens to examine the connection between regional development and family business.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and sustainable business represent the irrefutable future of all forward looking businesses in the world today. In this perspective article, the authors explore the confluence of these important topics by highlighting the role of family businesses in advancing sustainable brand activism aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs), like SDG 1, which emphasises poverty eradication. The authors fall on the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and online brand communities in family businesses as an anchor for promoting sustainability practices that align with UNSDGs.

Using literature review, the authors fall on the transformative potential of AI and online brand communities in family businesses as an anchor for promoting sustainability practices that align with UNSDGs.

Scholarly research on AI-driven sustainability brand activism in family businesses is either limited or nonexistent. Family businesses have a unique opportunity to use AI for eco-friendly operations, personalised brand engagement, eco-friendly product development, global collaborations and education and advocacy in support of the UNSDGs. Future research could look at how family businesses align their values, their long-term effects, how they work across generations, how resilient and flexible they are and how they compare to non-family businesses when it comes to using AI and brand activism as long-term strategies for sustainability and survival.

The authors call for family businesses, governments and stakeholders to take theoretical and practical actions in promoting AI-driven sustainability brand activism aligned with the UNSDGs. It underscores the distinctive role of family businesses in driving sustainability and fostering brand activism through AI in a digital age.

This article examines some of the trends that allow to understand and analyze the evolution of the idea of entrepreneurship to become a family business.

This paper is based on systematic research.

Around four current trends and four future trends are presented, which allow the authors to understand how the family of an entrepreneur influences in a direct and indirect way in their business, until even managing to transform that business into a family business through planning, organization, management and control exercised by several members of the family of the initial entrepreneur and his future generations in that company.

This research makes it possible to identify some challenges and opportunities that family businesses must face, which arise from an enterprise and which can help them to have business success, covering part of the past, present and future of such organizations. In this way, this article synthesizes how family dynamics and business dynamics are intertwined through the influence of the family on an entrepreneur’s business model.

Family businesses are characterized by the simultaneous presence of the family and the business system. The literature analyses sporadically the family support during the creation of a new family business. For this reason, the aim of this article is to offer new reflections and theoretical approaches in the field of family business studies. In fact, the study focuses on the first generation and the relationship and support with the previous generation (latent generation).

This perspective paper is based on a concise review of the literature.

The results of this offer a state of the art, synthesized and integrated, on the first generation to proposal the reader new knowledge on the first generation and relationships with family members.

This perspective paper distinguishes between the first generation formally engaged in the family business and the latent generation. The authors identify latent generation as a generation coeval with the first that supports the entrepreneur without being formally engaged in the family business. This study summarizes existing research on the first generation, highlighting the crucial role of the latent generation. Considering the latent generation determines an implicit and tacit generational transition not yet considered in the literature on the topic This study provides new research directions for scholars and managers to understand the entrepreneurial behaviors of families, family members and family businesses.

The governance of family businesses has attracted considerable scrutiny among scholars and practitioners. This paper explores influences that have defined corporate governance practices in family firms in the last century and reflects on the possible direction of research and practice in the next century.

This manuscript undertakes a literature review of past and recent literature investigating corporate governance practices within family businesses.

The evolution of corporate governance in the family business literature is underpinned by centralised decision-making structures, the need to overcome fundamental corporate governance challenges, the increasing relevance of family governance models and the recognition and adoption of contemporary trends in the corporate governance space. The review also suggests that corporate governance and family business research in the next century will be dominated by technology-based governance, sustainable governance, globalisation and the validation for multi-board structures, greater attention to succession planning and diversity, and channelling significant resources to innovation.

The paper synthesises developments in the corporate governance–family business literature and proposes a future perspective.

The stereotypes of the dodgy businessman and businessman gangster are established typologies in both the criminology and family business literature, but nevertheless, there is still an evident dearth of substantive studies on the topic. Family business scholars have begun to acknowledge the limited nature of such explorations of criminality in family firm businesses. The purpose of this article is therefore to review, synthesise and solidify existing research on this under-researched area of family business management.

This perspective article explores and synthesises the links between acquisitive crime, criminal predation and family business to address an identifiable research gap in the literature of criminology, entrepreneurship and family business. It examines the overlap between criminal activities and business practices, shedding light on how individuals in the family business community may become involved in criminal activities due to various factors, including coercion, addiction and financial gain.

This perspective highlights emerging research trends that have the potential to increase the knowledge about the “dark side” of family business.

Being a perspective paper this brief exploration of the literature can only cover a small cross section of the literature. A conceptual model emerges, which illustrates shared aspects of crimino-entrepreneurial identity between authentic entrepreneurs and criminals.

This perspective article scopes the extant literature covering the links between acquisitive crime, criminal predation and family business to help guide the direction of future research. The piece presents new perspectives on the intersection of acquisitive crime and family business, and its novelty lies in its synthesis of the disparate elements from the diverse literature to contribute to the said literature.