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Special Issue on Family Firms and Family Governed Multinationals in the Global Economy

Submission deadline: January 31, 2016

Family businesses represent the majority of all companies and dominate the economic landscape around the world. In the USA, one-third of the S&P 500 firms are owned/controlled and/or managed by the founding family, and family businesses account for 89% of total tax returns, 64% of GDP, and employ 62% of the total workforce (Anderson and Reeb, 2003; Astrachan and Shanker, 2003). In Europe the importance of family firms is even higher. Family firms also significantly contribute to the economic growth of economies in South and East Asia, Latin America, and Africa. 

There is a need for more research on this important sector of the global economy, its underlying forces, processes and consequences, to create a richer field of global strategy. In particular, we aim to encourage a multidisciplinary understanding of these issues by integrating approaches from strategy and strategic management more closely with IB, international entrepreneurship, economic sociology, and family business studies. The objective of the special issue is to develop a finer-grained analysis of how family governance influences international diversification and global strategic growth. We hope that this collection of papers will contribute to the ongoing yet still inconclusive dialogue among scholars in these disciplines, with the aim of constructing a more unified body of theory for thinking about family business. Hence, we welcome both theoretical and empirical contributions, papers adopting diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, and submissions by mixed industry-academic co-author teams.

For more information: http://gsj.strategicmanagement.net/pdf/GSJ_-Family_Firms_and_Family_Governed_Multinationals_in_the_Global_Economy.pdf