The growth of an academic field
The academic field that focuses on family businesses and multigenerational entrepreneurship started out in the mid-80s. A handful of pioneers set arduously to work and soon slow growth transformed into a veritable boom.
Over the years, many peer-reviewed articles about family businesses have been published in award-winning journals like notably the Journal of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (established in 1976, Publisher; Wiley). In 1988, Family Business Review was established as the first academic journal dedicated to family business topics by publisher SAGE. As can be seen by the graph below (source: Family Business Review 2015, Vol. 28(1) 4 – 9), the number of academic articles published on the family business topic have exponentially increased over the past decades and are set to grow further. The Family Business Review alone submissions per year have increased from 32 in 2004 to 205 in 2015. The surge in interest has given occasion for two more specialised journals to emerge: In 2010, publishers Elsevier published the first Volume of the Journal of Family Business Strategy, established by a group of leading family business academics. Closely following in 2011 did the Journal of Family Business Management published by Emerald.