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Open research questions in Family Business Performance and Succession

239 gap statements mined from Family Business Performance and Succession papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 2,477 papers on the topic — drawn mostly from each paper's own stated research gap, future-work, challenge and limitation notes, and its abstract. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one.

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What the literature leaves open

  • While scholarly and practical interests in family businesses’ formal governance have grown substantially, the behavioral logics underlying governance formalization remain poorly understood.

    Behavioral Logic of Formal Governance in Family Businesses: The Moderating Roles of Firm Size and Political Connection · 2026 · DOI

  • Emotional attachment shows no significant association with SE, suggesting that internal affective ties alone are insufficient to mobilise external engagement.

    Balancing bonds and business: how socioemotional wealth shapes family firm success · 2026 · DOI

  • Although research examining the role of women directors in fostering innovation within family firms continues to expand, the mechanisms underlying their influence remain insufficiently understood.

    Women Directors and R&D Investment in Family Firms: The Mediating Role of Debt Financing · 2025 · DOI

  • Future research should explore MBP across different organizational contexts and investigate intervention strategies to mitigate its negative effects.

    Management by Perkele: examining the impact of destructive leadership in Finnish family-owned SMEs · 2025 · DOI

  • However, studies exploring the relative importance of leadership traits that influence inclusive work culture in family-owned organisations are scarce.

    Navigating change: exploring leadership characteristics for implementing inclusive work practices in organisations with familial leadership ties · 2025 · DOI

  • Future research should consider comparative analyses across different institutional contexts and explore broader CSR dimensions, including environmental and community practices.

    Exploring the influence of family ownership and management on employee-centered corporate social responsibility practices in Brazilian firms · 2025 · DOI

  • The research notes that prior studies have highlighted the importance of professionalizing management in family businesses, but have not fully explored the impact of emotional intelligence.

    GESTÃO DE PESSOAS E RETENÇÃO DE TALENTOS EM EMPRESAS FAMILIARES DE PEQUENO E MÉDIO PORTE · 2026 · DOI

  • Lack of clear decision rights and minimum process control mechanisms. Excessive concentration of decision authority at the owner level.

    Designing A Functional Organizational Structure for Business Sustainability in A Family-Owned Garment Sme: A Case Study of Ragam Jaya Garment House · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of structured coordination mechanisms in family-owned SMEs can lead to operational inefficiencies. The absence of clear decision rights and minimum process control mechanisms can hinder long-term business sustainability. The study addresses the gap in understanding organizational challenges in family-owned SMEs.

    Designing A Functional Organizational Structure for Business Sustainability in A Family-Owned Garment Sme: A Case Study of Ragam Jaya Garment House · 2026 · DOI

  • However, the issues of the development of successive behavior and the involvement of young people in family business (FB) remain largely understudied in Russia.

    Correlation Between Family Relationships and Entrepreneurial Intentions of Youth in Family Business Context · 2026 · DOI

  • Prior research has not fully examined the impact of family influence and identification on cash holdings.

    Emotional attachment and cash holdings in family SMEs: the effect of family influence and identification · 2026 · DOI

  • The existing literature lacks a comparative analysis of Japanese and Indian family businesses. There is a gap in understanding the role of cultural codification and patriarchal gridlock in family business longevity.

    Cultural Codification and Patriarchal Gridlock: A Comparative Study of Longevity in Japanese and Indian Family Businesses · 2026 · DOI

  • The research aims to address this gap by examining the mediating role of organizational climate.

    Redefining Organizational Politics: Implications for Organizational Climate and Work-Role Innovation in Family-Owned SMEs · 2026 · DOI

  • The need to sustain viability while navigating persistent demands for legacy preservation, professionalization, innovation, and growth.

    Strategic tensions and adaptive equilibrium in family firms: A middle-range theory of sustainable transformation · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a lack of research on how the characteristics of family SMEs affect their digital transformation. The study addresses the gap by examining the effect of family involvement, culture, and human resource skills on digital transformation.

    Digital Transformation in Family SMEs: The Effects of Family Involvement, Culture, and Human Resource Skills · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a need to understand the management particularities of family businesses. The study identifies a gap in the literature regarding the challenges faced by family businesses and the strategies for overcoming them.

    ANÁLISE DE ALGUNS DESAFIOS VIVENCIADOS POR EMPRESAS FAMILIARES NO BRASIL · 2026 · DOI

  • Finally, future research should investigate how stakeholders perceive CSR overspending, whether as a moral commitment, strategic signaling, or inefficient resource allocation, and under what conditions it leads to enhanced legitimacy, stakeholder trust, or potential backlash.

    Family Ownership and CSR Overspending: Evidence from India on the Mediating Role of CSR Committee Composition · 2026 · DOI

  • Prior research has not fully explored the relationship between board independence and bank credit in family-owned SMEs. The study seeks to address this gap by examining the specific role of independent directors in enhancing firms' financial credibility. The research gap is significant, as family-owned SMEs are a crucial part of the economy, but their access to external finance is limited.

    Does board independence influence bank credit in family-owned SMEs? evidence from India · 2026 · DOI

  • Methodologically, the combination of PLS-SEM and NCA provides new insights into the sufficiency and necessity of family firm resources – an underexplored area in family business research.

    How does familiness drive knowledge accumulation in family firms? PLS-SEM and NCA insights on the role of family essence · 2026 · DOI

  • Prior research has not fully considered the dual-agency nature of family business succession.

    Fly Solo, Then Return Home? Offspring's Entrepreneurship Experience and their Future As Family Business Successors · 2026 · DOI

  • Configuration theory often treats organizational forms as states to be classified rather than positions to be traversed, explaining the existence of configurations more readily than the movement between them.

    Strategic tensions and adaptive equilibrium in family firms: A middle-range theory of sustainable transformation · 2026 · DOI

  • While the literature has mainly analyzed mediation mechanisms related to strategic reorientations (Wiersema and Bantel 1993), organizational restructuring, or changes in governance and managerial power (Shen and Cannella 2002), very few studies have considered the role of ESG in this process.

    Executive Succession and Performance of European Listed Companies: The Mediating Role of ESG Performance · 2026 · DOI

  • The study utilizes the reduced FIBER scale (FIER) to capture the socioemotional wealth in an underresearched European context, while combining the socioemotional wealth model and Upper Echelons Theory to explain the capacity-orientation-outcome model in which family's discretion in decision-making stemming from family control and influence relates to family-centric orientations, shaping family firm performance.

    Does family control perform? Unpacking the role of socioemotional mechanisms linking family control and family firm performance · 2026 · DOI

  • This framework, drawing from social network and institutional theory, elucidates the formation of SEW as driven by multidimensional social motivations, thus reconciling mixed findings from previous SEW research.

    The Social Embeddedness of Socioemotional Wealth: A Review and Future Research Agenda · 2024 · DOI

  • This study extends the F-PEC framework beyond its quantitative origins, integrates it with the dualistic model of passion and surfaces gender as a conditioning, intersecting influence largely absent from prior F-PEC-based research – a data-generated hypothesis warranting further investigation, contributing context-specific insight from an underrepresented Gulf setting.

    Family influence, gender and entrepreneurial passion in Saudi family businesses · 2026 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Family Business Performance and Succession

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Open questions raised by papers listed on this page include: (1) While scholarly and practical interests in family businesses’ formal governance have grown substantially, the behavioral logics underlying governance formalization remain poorly understood (“Behavioral Logic of Formal Governance in Family Businesses: The Moderating…”, 2026); (2) The research notes that prior studies have highlighted the importance of professionalizing management in family businesses, but have not fully explored the impact of emotional intelligence (“GESTÃO DE PESSOAS E RETENÇÃO DE TALENTOS EM EMPRESAS FAMILIARES DE PEQUENO E…”, 2026); (3) Lack of clear decision rights and minimum process control mechanisms (“Designing A Functional Organizational Structure for Business Sustainability in…”, 2026); (4) Prior research has not fully examined the impact of family influence and identification on cash holdings (“Emotional attachment and cash holdings in family SMEs: the effect of family…”, 2026); (5) There is a lack of research on how the characteristics of family SMEs affect their digital transformation (“Digital Transformation in Family SMEs: The Effects of Family Involvement,…”, 2026). 239 gap statements have been mined from Family Business Performance and Succession papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 2,477 papers on the topic; the gaps come from whichever of those papers state one. They are mostly the research gaps the authors state and the papers' abstracts, plus future-work, limitations and challenges passages. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one, so you can read the original claim in context.

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