Entrepreneurship & Regional Development
For a Special Issue on
This Special Issue aims to advance theoretical and empirical discussions on Chinese family businesses and entrepreneurial families by diving deep into them as contexts that challenge prevailing Western theories and as generative contexts for indigenous theorizing in family entrepreneurship.
Scholarship has increasingly highlighted the importance of context in shaping entrepreneurial phenomena (Barkema et al., 2015; Suddaby et al., 2010; Welter, 2011) and emphasized entrepreneurship as a socially constructed process (Gartner et al., 2016; Steyaert, 2007; Thompson et al., 2020). Yet dominant frameworks in family business and family entrepreneurship-such as socioemotional wealth (SEW), agency theory, stewardship, and the resource-based view (RBV)-were largely developed in Western institutional and cultural environments characterized by individualism, contractual governance, and relatively liberal market economies (Fang et al., 2022; Huang et al., 2021; Sharma & Chua, 2013). When these frameworks are applied to Chinese family enterprises, their underlying assumptions about self-interest, agency costs, governance logics, and resource valuation often prove misaligned, producing puzzling or contradictory findings (Ge et al., 2024; Steyaert & Katz, 2004).
Given Chinese firms' global importance, their distinctive development patterns are particularly salient in the current geopolitical context, where family enterprises sit at the center of international business while simultaneously adapting to uncertainties, trade frictions, and institutional turbulence (Ahlstrom et al., 2025; Huang et al., 2021). These dynamics underscore a critical theoretical challenge: do the concepts, relationships, and models embedded in Western theories hold when applied to Chinese family firms, or do they require reformulation?
We view this gap not only as evidence that Chinese family enterprises often appear as systematically different under prevailing frameworks, but also as an opportunity for indigenous theorizing that takes their cultural, institutional, demographic, and geopolitical specificities as central explanatory mechanisms. Addressing this challenge is essential not only for advancing understanding of Chinese family enterprises, but also for broadening entrepreneurship and family business scholarship at individual, organizational, and institutional levels.
Full paper deadline: 01 September 2026
An ERD Special Issue workshop to be held at Zhejiang University, China, in April 2026. The special issue editors and ERD editorial board members will provide developmental feedback to paper presentations during the workshop to enhance the quality and contribution of the papers in order to maximize the impact of the SI. Presentations at the workshop do not guarantee acceptance of a paper for publication in ERD, and attending the workshop is not a precondition for acceptance in the Special Issue.
Special Issue Editor(s)
Bingbing GE, Lancaster University Management School, UK
b.ge1@lancaster.ac.uk
Hanqing "Chevy" FANG, Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA
fangha@mst.edu
Alfredo DE MASSIS, D'Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy; IMD Business School, Switzerland; Lancaster University, UK; Research Center of Family Business and Institute for Entrepreneurs, School of Management, Zhejiang University, China
alfredo.demassis@unich.it
Junsheng DOU, Research Center of Family Business and Institute for Entrepreneurs, School of Management, Zhejiang University, China
jsdou@zju.edu.cn
Winnie Qian PENG, Roger King Center for Asian Family Business and Family Office, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China
pengq@ust.hk
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Bingbing Ge
Assistant Professor
Lancaster University
LANCASTER
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