REMINDER: 2nd Workshop on Family Firm Management Research

[entrepreneurship-phd at lists.uni-essen.de]

2nd Workshop on Family Firm Management Research
Nice, JUNE 1-2, 2006
Deadline: January 15 2006

BACKGROUND
Family business research has grown fast in both scale and scope over the past decade. Interestingly, most of the recent comparative research between family and non-family firms has concluded that family firms seem to outperform non-family firms on many performance ratios. Naturally, this result puts a positive image on family firms that were not as well considered previously. These findings deserve more research and analysis to understand and disentangle the sources of family firm's competitiveness.

The first workshop held in Jönköping in 2005 has allowed us to design a panorama of current research about the management of family firms. This second workshop intends to set the stage for future research.  We hope that it will be a unique opportunity for researchers to share their experiences, create research teams strengthen family firm research, and therefore contribute to the development of knowledge in management and organization.

CHAIRPERSONS
Jean-Luc ARREGLE and Philippe VERY (EDHEC Business School, Nice, France)
Leif MELIN & Annika HALL (Jönköping International Business School, Sweden)

INVITED SPEAKER
Danny Miller & Isabella Le Breton-Miller:
Competitive Advantage of Family Businesses
Co-authors of the book "Managing for the long run: Lessons in competitive advantage from great family businesses"

CALL FOR PAPERS

"Family firms" are defined as family-controlled firms or of family -controlled and -managed firms. Only papers dealing with at least one of these populations are welcomed

Four categories of research are of interest for the workshop :
1) Review of the family business research field : state-of-the-art papers will allow to discuss the knowledge already acquired and the main challenges to address in future research
2) Review of the methodologies used for conducting research on family firm management: such papers will invite participants to discuss methodological choices in relation to research topics, identify opportunities and pitfalls, and hopefully contribute to still enhance the quality of future research in the family business field.
3) Research that contributes to refining general theories. As David Whetten concluded at the first 2005 workshop in Jönköping, researchers often borrow theories from the field of management/ organization studies, apply them to family firms, but they often neglect to explain what their findings bring to the larger field. We will welcome papers that use the family firm context for contributing to the development of general concepts and theories. Comparisons between, family and non-family firms should belong to this category.
4) Research focusing on a topic specific to family firms. For instance :
- survival and performance over generations,
- specific competitive advantages of family-firms
- interactions between the family and the firm and their impact on management
- governance, decision-making and strategizing processes at the top
- succession of ownership and leadership,

More info at http://www.eiasm.org/frontoffice/event_announcement.asp?event_id=431