Editorial

Looking Back and Moving On

G. Tyge Payne, Pramodita Sharma

The year 2017 continued to reinforce the anchoring position of FBR in family business studies. Key metrics and trends of FBR indicate a strong, stable journal that is widely read and supported by a dedicated and growing community of scholars. If the best predictor of future performance is past performance, then we are optimistic about the future of FBR. Indeed, in a typical family business tradition, we hope to leverage our past successes to help us continue to expand our status and reputation within the scholarly business community.

Special Issue Introduction:
Family Business Research as a Boundary Spanning Platform: An Introduction

Daniel Holt, Alison Pearson, G. Tyge Payne, Pramodita Sharma

FBR’s first review introduction article in 2016 noted that “family business is on the threshold of its next era” with the included reviews representing “the past, present, and future of family business research”. Building on this legacy, it is our hope that the manuscripts in this issue can be leveraged to fulfill the aspirations that “family business scholars are poised to help build the foundation of knowledge” for topics that have “positive implications for individuals, families, organizations, and societies.”

Articles

The Intersection of Family Firms and Institutional Contexts: A Review and Agenda for Future Research

Sohrab Soleimanof, Matthew W. Rutherford, Justin W. Webb

Research Questions:

• • How are family firms’ behaviors and outcomes influenced by their institutional contexts?

• • How can family firms influence their institutional contexts and contribute to the institutional changes and developments in their contexts?

• What are the major gaps in our understanding about the interactions between family firms and institutional contexts?

Nonfamily Members in Family Firms: A Review and Future Research Agenda

William Tabor, James J. Chrisman, Kristen Madison, James M. Vardaman

Research Questions:

• • What is the state of knowledge on nonfamily members in family firms?

• Where might future research efforts on nonfamily members be directed to fill gaps in our understanding?

Unlocking the Black Box of Family Business Advising: Insights from Psychology

Vanessa M. Strike, Alexandra Michel, Nadine Kammerlander

Research Questions:

• • How is advice input linked to advice output?

• • What are the underlying mechanisms and internal structures of the advising process?

• • What do we already know about family firm advising and what is still missing?

• How can family firm advising research benefit from extant knowledge on advising generated by psychology?

More Than Meets the Eye: A Review and Future Directions for the Social Psychology of Socioemotional Wealth

David S. Jiang, Franz W. Kellermanns, Timothy P. Munyon, M. Lane Morris

Research Questions:

• • What do we know about what socioemotional wealth is; how it functions; and within whom it resides in family firms?

• • To what extent has the socioemotional wealth literature become reified (i.e., taken-for-granted in ways that an abstract concept that is caused by human activity is used as a concrete concept that is devoid of the human activity that caused it) by family business scholars?

• There is a need to integrate SEW and social psychology theories (e.g. social comparison theory; goal systems theory; broaden-and-build theory) in order to better understand SEW’s social, motivational, cognitive, affective and behavioral underpinnings and causal relationships.