The reflexive dynamics of institutionalization: the case of the family business

摘要

Being family businesses researchers ourselves, we are very much a part of the institutionalization process and discourse that we have visualized and are partly critical to in this essay. Family business research grows very rapidly. The increase in the number of research centres, endowed professorships, special issues of mainstream management journals and master's, even PhD, programmes, are definitely signs of an emerging and important stream of research that demands its space within die broad discipline of management and organization studies. But we have also argued that these increased research activities are paralleled with intensified attention from practice; more executive education programmes, training seminars, consultancy services, lobby groups and professional organizations are indeed examples on how family business practitioners themselves increasingly perceive their family business community as a category of organization with common characteristics.