Call for papers
TAKING A HARD LOOK AT SOFT ISSUES
IN THE FAMILY BUSINESS AND BUSINESS FAMILY
GUEST EDITORS:
Ethel Brundin, Jönköping International Business School, Sweden (ethel.brundin@jibs.hj.se)
Reg Litz, University of Manitoba, Canada (rlitz@cc.umanitoba.ca)
Arist von Schlippe, University of Witten/Herdecke, Germany (schlippe@uni-wh.de)
INTRODUCTION:
Family businesses and business families are extremely complex and often complicated phenomena. They are highly idiosyncratic and combine family and business capabilities and limitations in an almost infinite variety of ways. Besides that they are also home to equally complex and complicated social and psychological occurrences, which do not readily conform to, nor are easily studied by a 'normal science' paradigm. Accordingly, this issue is intended to provide a place to engage some of these less conventional, but arguably no less important, topics. In creating this forum our intention is to enrich current understandings concerning what can potentially happen, for better or worse, when family and business come together. While we welcome efforts to engage conventional theoretical perspectives (e.g., agency theory, resource-based-view etc.) we also would especially welcome novel, non-linear attempts to understand the family business and/or business family phenomena. Both theoretical papers and empirical approaches will be considered. In the general spirit of the Special Issue outline we invite imaginative explorations that take a 'hard look' at one or more 'soft issues' including, but not limited to, the following:
• the role of emotions both generally or specifically (e.g. anxiety, joy, happiness, anger, envy)
• family dynamics in relationship-, role- and/or power-conflicts (invisible) loyalties, betrayal, and reconciliation within and between generations
• 'sub-tribal' (i.e., sibling family unit) relations and their potential for enhancing complexity
• the role of resilience in shaping how families respond to sudden (e.g., suicide) and gradual loss (e.g., cancer, Alzheimers, etc.)
• next generation individuation (processes through which differentiated components become integrated into stable wholes) and de-individuation (e.g. learned helplessness)
• the "dark side" of the family (secrets, concealment, corruption, fraud, blackmail, inherited ethical dilemmas, the family business as burden, etc.)
• communication and miscommunication
• black sheep and scapegoating
• the meaning of money in the family business-business family system
• self-deception in interpreting family-related contributions to firm performance
SUBMISSION DATE: JUNE 30, 2012
More information on the special issue, including full author guidelines forthcoming at www.emeraldinsight.com/jfbm.htm. Interested authors are also invited to contact the guest editors concerning possible paper topics.
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