CFP: 3rd Workshop on Family Firms Management Research

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

3RD WORKSHOP ON FAMILY FIRMS MANAGEMENT RESEARCH
JONKOPING, SWEDEN, JUNE 3-5, 2007
Deadline: 30th January, 2007

CHAIRPERSONS

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

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 much considered previously. These findings deserve more research and analysis to understand and disentangle the sources of family firm's competitiveness.  

The two first workshops held in Jönköping in 2005 and in Nice in 2006 have given us a new arena for gathering and discussing current research on the management of family firms. This third workshop intends to build on the success of the earlier workshops and further expand the horizon for future research. We hope that it will be a unique opportunity for researchers to share their experiences, give feedback on each other's work and to form new research collaborations. In short, we aim to strengthen family firm research, and thereby contribute to the development of knowledge in family firm management and development. The workshop has a tradition to attract well-known scholars from related fields to share their interests and perspectives on family firm management. The first workshop featured Professor David Whetten and the second Professor Danny Miller and Isabelle LeBreton-Miller. We are proud to present the key note speakers of the third workshop. 

KEY NOTE SPEAKERS

1. G.T (Tom) Lumpkin, Texas Tech University, TX
"Entrepreneurial Orientation and Family Firms"

2. TBA

WORKSHOP PROGRAMME

The workshop programme will already start on Sunday June 3 at the end of the afternoon with registration and an informal welcome drink. .  The academic part of the workshop will however begin on Monday June 4 in the morning and end on Tuesday June 5 in the afternoon.

SPECIAL ISSUE

Chairpersons Leif Melin & Mattias Nordqvist will guest edit a special issue of the Entrepreneurship and Regional Development: An International Journal" on the theme "Entrepreneurial families and family firms". We especially encourage authors of papers for the workshop's category 1 to submit their contributions to this ERD Special Issue. 

The Special Issue has an open call, but the EIASM Workshop offers a possibility to receive initial feedback on a paper before submitting it to the Special Issue. To be considered for publication in the special issue, revised manuscript must be received by September 24, 2007. For more information about the special issue, please visit www.cefeo.se or contact the guest editors.

CALL FOR PAPERS

"Family firms" are defined as family-controlled (ownership) or family 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) Conceptual and empirical research focusing on the specific sub-theme of "Entrepreneurial families and   
 family firms" (see special issue call for paper above). We seek papers that can contribute significantly to    
our knowledge about the entrepreneurial activities of families and in family firms. Possible topics are:
- The role of family for supporting and financing new ventures
- The family as a context of specific values, norms and networks and how these may facilitate or  constrain entrepreneurial activities
- How the owner-family maintains and transmits an entrepreneurial spirit and capacity  across generations
- The family institution as a promoter or barrier to regional and national entrepreneurial growth 
- Historical accounts of the entrepreneurial role of families in the emergence of industries and enterprising  regions
- Processes and outcomes of corporate entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial orientation in family and non-family firms as well as in different types of family firms
- The family firm as metaphor for overlapping territories (e.g. the family, the firm and the ownership; or the public and the private), and its role for entrepreneurship

2) Review of the family business research field: state-of-the-art papers that allow to discuss the knowledge already acquired and the main challenges to address in future research.  Review papers should focus on a main theme within the general family business field, such as corporate governance, strategic management, human resource management, corporate entrepreneurship, gender or professional management etc.

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, but also between different types of family firms should belong to this category.

4) Empirical research focusing on a topics 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

DEADLINES:
Abstracts should be submitted by 30th January, 2007.
Full Papers are due by 1st May, 2007.

More info at http://www.eiasm.org/frontoffice/event_announcement.asp?event_id=486