Family businesses in the future: navigating the paradoxes of contemporary transformation

For several decades, family businesses have occupied a central place in academic debates on management and entrepreneurship. Their study rests on a fundamental question that has structured the emergence and legitimacy of this field: Do family businesses differ from non-family businesses in terms of resources, behaviors, and decisions? If so, how and why do they differ? (Chrisman et al., 2003). Pioneering work shows that the intertwining of family and business generates distinctive organizational configurations. The preservation of socio-emotional heritage characterizes these (Gómez-Mejia et al., 2007), a time orientation focused on future generations (Zellweger et al., 2012), and hybrid governance models that reconcile family control with professionalization (Sharma et al., 2012). However, recent research emphasizes that this specificity cannot be reduced to a simplistic dichotomy. Family businesses form a heterogeneous group whose strategic trajectories, innovation capacities, and performance vary according to the intensity of family involvement, governance structures, and institutional contexts (De Massis et al., 2016; Calabrò et al., 2019). In a context marked by the climate emergency, geopolitical shifts, digital acceleration, and rising societal expectations, family businesses face conflicting tensions. They must arbitrate between tradition and innovation, family identity and strategic openness, and owner control and external partnerships. These paradoxes stimulate a renewal of analytical frameworks to understand better how these organizations mobilize their idiosyncratic resources to develop resilience and strategic adaptation capacities (Firfiray et al., 2018; De Massis and Rondi, 2020; Erdogan et al., 2019).

This track invites a renewal of theoretical and empirical perspectives on family businesses by exploring the diversity of their practices, trajectories, and organizational structures within a rapidly changing environment. We invite researchers to submit empirical contributions, whether they employ quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methodologies, as well as conceptual work that addresses the following questions:

How do family businesses construct their strategic directions at the intersection of transgenerational legacies, emotional dynamics, and competitive pressures? What decision-making processes, governance mechanisms, or organizational arrangements emerge to reconcile the tensions between continuity and transformation, between identity and openness to change?

How do these organizations approach innovation in its various forms—technological, organizational, social, or in business models? What resources do they mobilize to develop distinctive innovation capabilities? How do they articulate entrepreneurial creativity and the preservation of family heritage, experimentation and prudence, exploration of new markets and fidelity to their core identity?

Faced with the challenges of sustainability, digital transformation, and corporate social responsibility, what strategies are they deploying? How do their long-term vision, local roots, and attention to multiple stakeholders influence their choices and performance? What lessons and practices can they inspire to rethink growth, governance, and organizational sustainability?

This track aims to provide a space for rigorous scientific dialogue to advance the understanding of family dynamics and generate concrete managerial implications to support these companies in their transformation journeys.

Track chairs:

Céline Barredy (CEROS) 

 Imene ZARROUKI (CEROS), Univ Paris NANTERRE  (izarrouki@parisnanterre.fr )