Natalia Vershinina, Audencia Business School

Cristina Bettinelli, University of Bergamo

Marco Mismetti, Stockholm School of Economics

Giovanna Campopiano, University of Bergamo

Paola Rovelli, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano

Andreas Giazitzoglu, Northumbria University

This special issue examines how gender inequality in family firms operates through organisational structures and decision-making processes rather than individual attitudes. The call challenges mainstream family business research that overlooks how patriarchal norms systematically advantage male family members while rendering women's contributions invisible or subordinate.

Contributions should apply gender theory and the willingness-ability-authority framework to show how governance structures enable or constrain efforts toward redistribution of power. The editors particularly welcome studies exposing how initiatives may appear progressive without achieving substantive change, and work examining hegemonic masculinity in family contexts—how ideals of the effective heir shape succession decisions and police gender performances.

Appel publié par Gender Work and Organization. Lire l'appel complet sur le site de l'éditeur. Fiche de l'appel sur kerostig.

Potential topics

• Hegemonic masculinities and succession: How are readiness, leadership potential and fit defined and performed in family firms? Which rites of passage, informal trials, and evaluation criteria enact masculinity contests among heirs? Under what discursive and relational conditions can men's explicit advocacy for equality enhance, rather than erode, their standing? When and how do care-centred, collaborative, or non-hegemonic masculinities gain legitimacy?
• Willingness, ability, and the redistribution of authority: Where does willingness collapse under kinship politics, and where does it convert into action? Which specific instruments — binding remuneration committees, gender-equal succession clauses, mixed family/non-family appointment slates with veto power — shift ability from kin coalitions to institutionalised bodies with enforceable rights? How do these arrangements travel across generational transitions?
• Emotional, aesthetic, and reputational glue work: How do feminised labours of harmony, client smoothing and reputational caretaking sustain legitimacy without converting into jurisdiction, ownership or promotion in family firms and in entrepreneurial families? What happens when these labours are surfaced, measured, rewarded, or redistributed, and what is the role of the family in this? How do these practices differentially tax daughters, wives, in-laws, and non-family managers?
• Temporal dynamics: path dependence and rupture: When do equality reforms survive family firm succession events? What tipping points loosen masculinity-contest logics and allow successors to deploy formal authority for redistribution rather than preservation? How do market shocks, legal changes, or religious norms recalibrate both willingness and ability in family firms? How do successors' identity work when logics evolve during a generational transition?
• Intersectional and comparative analysis: How do age, class, ethnicity, marital/parental status, sexual orientation, and religion shape the policing of masculinities, feminities and the credibility of actor's authority claims? How do family structures (extended families, polygamy, multi-branch ownership) mediate gendered governance? What travels, and what does not, across national cultures, legal frameworks, and faith traditions?
• External accountability vs. internal decision rights: When do ESG disclosures, audits, and investor or customer pressures reconfigure internal masculine ideals and decision rights in family firms and when are they absorbed as optics? What coupling mechanisms translate external accountability into binding internal authority for equality actors?

Timeline

• October 1, 2027: Submission deadline

Melanie De Ruiter, Nyenrode Business University

Benjamin D. McLarty, Louisiana Tech University

Denise M. Rousseau, Carnegie Mellon University

James M. Vardaman, Memphis University

Despite calls to consider context in Organizational Behavior (OB) and management research, the broader OB and management literature has largely ignored family firms and the experiences and employment dynamics of their employees. OB research samples often are drawn without considering the nature of the settings involved or any potential impact on the variables of interest. Since family firms are a common type of business, ranging from sixty-five to ninety percent worldwide, samples in many OB and management studies likely conflate respondents from family and non-family firms. Such conflation can mask differences in behavioral processes that can result in erroneous inferences.

Treatment of family/non-family business as a dichotomous moderator only allows general differences to be noted without theoretically comparing psychological processes at the individual, team, and organizational levels. Moreover, since there is considerable heterogeneity within family firms, grouping employees working in different family firms together will likely forego important across family firm contextual differences in OB processes. Most studies in family firm research have been described as 'context-less'.

Appel publié par Group & Organization Management. Lire l'appel complet sur le site de l'éditeur. Fiche de l'appel sur kerostig.

Potential topics

• Development and validation of measurement instruments (including assessment of measurement invariance) that allow a more generic assessment of contextual effects often put forward in family firm research (e.g., socioemotional wealth) to help theorize and understand similarities and differences in OB processes between family and non-family firms, and within family firms
• Explicit tests of theories of context (e.g., trait activation theory; situation strength theory) to explain differences in relationships between personality traits and employee outcomes between family and non-family firms and within different types of family firms (e.g., enhanced understanding of family firm context as a driver for personality activation and impact on workplace performance and behaviors)
• Development and validation of personality measurement instruments specific to the context of family for use in family firms, and meaningful contextual comparisons across family firms (including assessment of measurement invariance)
• Enhanced theoretical understanding of how bifurcation bias based on family firm context as a potential motivational force for driving employee attitudes and behaviors
• Multilevel research to better understand how the family firm context affects the extent to which leadership styles may (or may not) trickle down from family executives to family and non-family managers and in turn affect non-family employee outcomes in different types of family firms
• An exploration of how critical events within the family firm context and family/non-family member dynamics shape employee and non-family manager perceptions and evaluations of their employment relationship with the family firm

Timeline

• December 15, 2025: Proposal submission deadline
• February 15, 2026: Decisions and feedback on proposals
• February 1, 2027: Full manuscript submission deadline
• May 1, 2027: Decisions and reviews on manuscripts
• August 1, 2027: Revised manuscripts due
• November 1, 2027: Second round decisions and reviews on revised manuscripts
• February 1, 2028: Second round revised manuscripts due
• April 1, 2028: SI editorial final review round and decisions on revised manuscripts
• May 15, 2028: Final submissions of manuscripts
• June 1, 2028: Final decision by guest editors
• July 1, 2028: Accepted manuscripts to publisher

This Special Issue seeks to advance theory and evidence on the evolution and response of governance systems in family firms to contemporary challenges such as the rise of public intervention in the economy, the advent of AI, and geopolitical turmoil. The special issue invites contributions that examine how governance mechanisms - including boards of directors, ownership structures, executive leadership, succession arrangements, and family governance systems - shape the ability of family firms to create value, preserve continuity, and adapt to changing environments.

Appel publié par Corporate Governance An International Review. Voir l'appel sur le site de l'éditeur. Fiche de l'appel sur kerostig.

Potential topics

• Evolution and response of governance systems in family firms to contemporary challenges
• Rise of public intervention in the economy
• Advent of AI
• Geopolitical turmoil
• Boards of directors
• Ownership structures
• Executive leadership
• Succession arrangements
• Family governance systems
• Value creation in family firms
• Continuity preservation in family firms
• Adaptation to changing environments

Timeline

• January 15, 2027: Deadline for proposal submissions