In the inaugural issue of the Journal of Family Business Strategy, Mattias Nordqvist and Leif Melin argued for the benefit of a ‘Strategy-as-Practice’ perspective for family business strategy research (Nordqvist & Melin, 2010). In this paper, we draw upon a contemporary conversation with Professor Leif Melin, to purposefully revisit and reflect on this promise. What was the promise, has it come to pass, and what might the future hold? Following the conversation with Leif, considered one of the founding fathers of this research stream, we review and discuss extant literature that has applied a practice theory perspective to family business. We call attention to practice theory approaches for the family business community and illustrate the benefits of researching family businesses with practice theory perspectives. Having taken stock, we then suggest research opportunities to further advance this avenue. Finally, we reflect on the past, present, and future of researching family practices to continue the advancement of family business strategy research led by this journal over the past 15 years.

Family businesses are rich in stories and narratives and offer a fertile ground to explore 'everyday life of family businesses' that 'may be difficult to access through other forms of empirical material' (Nordqvist and Gartner 2020, 122-123). In this paper, we use Helen (Tse's 2007) biography Sweet Mandarin to explore the complex dynamics of gender, race, and entrepreneurship in a transnational migrant family business. We regard this biography as Helen's attempt to make sense of her family's entrepreneurial past, to give voice to the women in her family and gain legitimacy in their entrepreneurial practices. Adopting an intersectionality lens attentive towards Chinese feminism and cultural contextualities, we contribute to current entrepreneurship feminist works that aim at unveiling structures reproducing gender and racial inequalities. Our theoretical approach reveals how Helen understood and legitimized Lily's entrepreneurial journey as a Chinese woman entrepreneur through three mechanisms: i) silently appropriating traditional assumptions of entrepreneurship; ii) associating family legacy to the entrepreneurial future; iii) anchoring on a hopeful future to overcome sacrifices. Our research demonstrates the power of biography as a unique genre of literature that offers in-depth insights into the intersection of gender and racial dynamics in family business that would go otherwise unnoticed.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the instilled family values in successors that evoke a range of emotions (positive, negative, neutral and ambivalent) that influence their decision-making process. Succession is an outcome of strategic decision-making and a critical time for both the predecessor and successor. In addition, this paper examines how emotion regulation mechanisms can address the need for research on succession in the Asian context, particularly regarding the declining number of successors to succeed. Design/methodology/approach This research was conducted qualitatively, which provides a closer connection to the real world and deals with complex phenomena. Data collection was conducted through three rounds of semi-structured interviews from 2022 to 2024. This paper used exploratory qualitative research to gain insight into underexplored phenomena through inductive reasoning and interpretation from 40 respondents across Asia. The data structure was displayed using Gioia’s methods. Findings This discussion investigates how Gen Z exhibits a distinctly different attitude towards succession, driven largely by their values and emotional dynamic responses. The analysis centres on the pivotal roles that family values and emotions play in shaping succession intention among Asian Gen Z. The findings suggest that strategic decisions to succeed also require internal and external stimuli. Research limitations/implications The main limitation of this research is that the concept of family values in regulating emotions can be developed further. Different concepts of values are worth investigating to assist in understanding how values can be tailored to suit the next generation of family business (FB) members. In addition, the role of culture in shaping family values also deserves attention. Practical implications The practical implications encourage successors to make objective decisions while upholding family values. Furthermore, this study provides insights into how FB owners enforce family values as binding among successors to ensure a successful succession process. Social implications In the Asian context, there is a relative lack of professional support from FBs’ advisors compared to the Western world. This study will increase awareness of the need to seek an expert counsellor to deal with FB paradoxes. Originality/value The originality and value of this research lie in the concept of family values in regulating emotions in the decision-making processes of successors in FBs. This study also contributes additional insight into demonstrating the applicability and complexity within diverse Asian socio-cultural settings.

Parental mentoring plays a pivotal role in fostering intrafamily succession and entrepreneurial endeavors. Taking an identity-based perspective, we conducted an exploratory multiple case study involving nine Chinese family firms to investigate how successors perceive the influence of mentoring from their entrepreneurial parents on the development of their entrepreneurial identities. Our findings reveal that successors' entrepreneurial identity changes from ambiguous to clarified through four perceived parental mentoring strategies, namely laying foundations, painting bright futures, relating experiences, and leading by examples. In particular, we show how the unique Chinese family dynamics resulted in some paradoxical tensions influencing the successors' entrepreneurial identity. By taking a holistic view, we conceptualize parental mentoring as a crucial nurturing strategy for successors and connect it to the process of successor identity transformation. This research sheds light on the nexus of entrepreneurial identity, family dynamics, and the Chinese cultural context within the realm of family business research and practice.

Despite the growing presence of family offices (FOs) in practice, research on FOs is still in its infancy. Through a systematic literature review (SLR) of 104 papers, we synthesize existing knowledge in the field by integrating insights from both academic and practitioner research. Our SLR provides a state-of-the-art understanding of FOs and identifies new avenues for research that combine theoretical insights with practical implications. Specifically, our research addresses three key questions: i) How has research on FOs evolved; ii) What do we know about FOs, and iii) How can researchers further contribute to the field? We find that current research focuses primarily on FOs as service providers, with limited attention to the perspective of families as need originators. By bridging academic and practitioner-oriented research, we propose a novel definition of FOs to advance the discourse in the field.

Jess Chua was a leading scholar in the field of family business and a major contributor to Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice both as an author and editor. His significant contributions to the field were acknowledged by the Web of Science, which listed him among the world’s most highly cited researchers in Economics and Business in 2017, 2019, and 2020. In this memorial editorial, we pay tribute to him by discussing his influence on the field through his academic work, mentoring, long-term collaborations with other scholars, and the kindness he and his wife, Eva Kan, showed to his colleagues and students.

This paper reviews the literature on the relationship between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) engagement and family firms. Drawing from mainstream databases, it identifies and analyzes 34 pivotal articles. Research on ESG and family firms is still emerging, but inconsistent findings and paradoxes obscure the field. Specifically, variations in theory, region, and research methods shape the relationship between family firms and ESG. This study uses bibliometric analysis to synthesize the literature to clarify ESG performance and its implications for family firms. Building on these findings, it proposes a theory-driven research agenda to address existing gaps and guide future studies. By advancing theoretical frameworks, this study enhances the understanding of ESG in family firms and outlines directions for further research.

Family is the most important, yet under researched, dimension in family business research. Following recent calls in Entrepreneurship-as-Practice, we bring a practice-based approach to family business research to understand next generation engagement over extended periods in family life. Drawing on a culinary family business's three published cookbooks, theorized as 'discursive artefacts', we examine how mundane family business practices can enable next generations to become successors. This study contributes to family business research with its re-focus on the family and offers new insights into practice theory-building in the emergent Entrepreneurship-as-Practice. Our findings illustrate how everyday practices in family lives - for example, cooking - can enable next generations' becoming family business successors, through socializing, bridging, and leading.

Family firms are paradoxical by nature due to the interplay of two distinct goal systems: the family and the firm. These systems involve nested tensions that can create apparent paradoxes over time. Taking a rhetorical history lens, we explore how family firms can dynamically produce temporal equilibria between goal systems through the strategic use of history. Empirically, we investigate the emergence and development of two apparent paradoxes unfolding through the history of the growth of Alpha, an Italian family firm in the packaging industry. Our findings suggest that rhetorical history can alleviate the tensions emergent from the paradoxical goal systems of family businesses. Our research provides a unique contribution by revealing the emergence and agentic process of the co-construction of rhetorical history, which involves multiple agencies from both family and non-family employees. Moreover, such co-created rhetorical history can dynamically produce temporal equilibria in family business's persistent paradoxical goal systems.

Our entry aims to raise awareness of Asian contexts and their impact on family business research. The family business is a popular form of business and has unique characteristics in Asian regions, yet it has received humble global scholarly attention. This could cause grave practical as well as academic issues when acclimatizing theories developed from other contexts. Our entry discusses in detail the context differences between the commonly researched developed countries in the West and Asia, and the potential three areas to extend the current theories in Asian contexts— historical events, immigration, and collectivism. In addition, we explain and unpack the heterogeneity within Asian countries from the perspectives of geography, ideology, economy, and religion.

Entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) is a novel perspective to analyse the interplay between support systems and businesses in regions. Simultaneously, universities have been playing increasingly important roles in entrepreneurship, fostering economic growth both through the wider regional economy (RE) and their own university EEs (UEEs). Entrepreneurs in residence (EiRs), chosen by universities as exemplar entrepreneurs, therefore provide potentially important conduits between the regional economy, UEEs and entrepreneurs, leading us to explore how and why do EiRs and universities interact in relation to entrepreneurial ecosystems to enhance the regional economy? Our qualitative study of a UK university case, conducted in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic which severely impacted many businesses’ access to resources, gives a particular temporal context to this research. It identifies accessing resources, building legitimacy and undertaking bridging activities as the three highest-level dimensions characterising EiR–university interactions, which have relevance for both the UEE and regional economy more widely, offering a framework for future EiR programmes. This study contributes to the regional entrepreneurship and EE literature, by examining the role of regional universities as anchor tenants and catalysts of entrepreneurial growth and resilience within regions, and calls for further research into the evolution of EiR–university interactions in different institutional contexts.