---
title: "Family business research: papers, trends and top journals"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “family business” appeared in 1,226 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in management (772), finance (220) and economics (140)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/family-business
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/family-business.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “family business” appeared in 1,226 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in management (772), finance (220) and economics (140). (as of 2026-11-03)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-11-03T18:03:37+09:00
window: 2026-10-05 to 2026-11-03
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Papers on “family business”

Research on “family business” in the 480 tracked journals: papers per year and category, the journals, institutions and countries publishing it, the keywords studied with it and its most-cited papers. It is not among the most frequent keywords of the last 30 days, so this page has no list of its latest papers.

Back to the ranking: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/keywords.md

## Key findings

- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “family business” appeared in 1,226 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in management (772), finance (220) and economics (140).
- 146 of them were published in 2025, against 101 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Lancaster University (24), International Institute for Management Development (23) and Zhejiang University (23).
- The journals publishing most of them were Journal of Family Business Strategy (57), Journal of Business Research (43) and Finance research letters (32).
- The most-cited of them is “Board Diversity and Corporate Social Responsibility: Empirical Evidence from France” (Journal of Business Ethics, 2020), with 639 citations.

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 78 | 51 | 75 | 72 | 112 | 104 | 73 | 74 | 79 | 54 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 10 | 16 | 17 | 14 | 20 | 15 | 14 | 41 | 42 | 31 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 8 | 12 | 10 | 10 | 8 | 22 | 15 | 32 | 17 | 6 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 1 | 8 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 7 | 13 | 3 | 8 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| All categories | 101 | 90 | 108 | 107 | 151 | 148 | 112 | 162 | 146 | 101 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Journal of Family Business Strategy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-family-business-strategy.md) | 57 |
| 2 | [Journal of Business Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-business-research.md) | 43 |
| 3 | [Finance research letters](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/finance-research-letters.md) | 32 |
| 4 | [Small Business Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/small-business-economics.md) | 30 |
| 5 | [Review of Managerial Science](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/review-of-managerial-science.md) | 27 |
| 6 | [Journal of Business Ethics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-business-ethics.md) | 26 |
| 7 | [Pacific-Basin Finance Journal](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pacific-basin-finance-journal.md) | 26 |
| 8 | [International Review of Financial Analysis](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-review-of-financial-analysis.md) | 21 |
| 9 | [International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-entrepreneurship-and-management-journal.md) | 19 |
| 10 | [Journal of Family and Economic Issues](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-family-and-economic-issues.md) | 13 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Lancaster University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/lancaster-university.md) | 24 |
| 2 | International Institute for Management Development | 23 |
| 3 | [Zhejiang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/zhejiang-university.md) | 23 |
| 4 | Jönköping University | 19 |
| 5 | Free University of Bozen-Bolzano | 18 |
| 6 | University of Bergamo | 13 |
| 7 | University of the Basque Country | 12 |
| 8 | Witten/Herdecke University | 12 |
| 9 | University of Chieti-Pescara | 10 |
| 10 | [HEC Montréal](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hec-montreal.md) | 9 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 167 |
| 2 | United States | 95 |
| 3 | Italy | 89 |
| 4 | Spain | 60 |
| 5 | United Kingdom | 59 |
| 6 | Germany | 51 |
| 7 | Canada | 35 |
| 8 | France | 34 |
| 9 | Switzerland | 32 |
| 10 | India | 30 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | socioemotional wealth | 102 |
| 2 | [corporate governance](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/corporate-governance.md) | 78 |
| 3 | family ownership | 61 |
| 4 | [firm performance](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/firm-performance.md) | 53 |
| 5 | [Chinese listed companies](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/chinese-listed-companies.md) | 43 |
| 6 | generational succession | 39 |
| 7 | family control | 35 |
| 8 | Chinese family firms | 29 |
| 9 | [ownership structure](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/ownership-structure.md) | 28 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 639 | 8.2 | [Board Diversity and Corporate Social Responsibility: Empirical Evidence from France](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04522-4) | [Journal of Business Ethics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-business-ethics.md) | 2020-05-08 | Rania Béji, Ouidad Yousfi, Nadia Loukil et al. |
| 2 | 377 | 3.3 | [Corporate social responsibility disclosure and market value: Family versus nonfamily firms](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.04.001) | [Journal of Business Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-business-research.md) | 2017-04-12 | Mehdi Nekhili, Haithem Nagati, Tawhid Chtioui et al. |
| 3 | 355 | 5.2 | [Innovation as recovery strategy for SMEs in emerging economies during the COVID-19 pandemic](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2021.101396) | [Research in International Business and Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/research-in-international-business-and-finance.md) | 2021-02-05 | Santiago‐Omar Caballero‐Morales |
| 4 | 295 | 2.9 | [Entrepreneurial orientation and innovation in family SMEs: Unveiling the (actual) impact of the Board of Directors](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2018.03.002) | [Journal of Business Venturing](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-business-venturing.md) | 2018-03-27 | Unai Arzubiaga, Josip Kotlar, Alfredo De Massis et al. |
| 5 | 283 | 4.2 | [Thirty years of research in family business journals: Status quo and future directions](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfbs.2021.100422) | [Journal of Family Business Strategy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-family-business-strategy.md) | 2021-03-31 | Paola Rovelli, Marcos Ferasso, Alfredo De Massis et al. |

## Research ideas that follow this keyword

- [The first great succession of China's private firms](https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/family-firm-succession-in-china.md)

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “family business”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/family-business

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-family-business,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Papers on “family business”},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/family-business}},
  urldate = {2026-11-03},
  note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).