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

Bingbing Ge, Lancaster University Management School

Hanqing Fang, Missouri University of Science and Technology

Alfredo De Massis, D'Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara

Junsheng Dou, Zhejiang University

Winnie Qian Peng, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Appel publié par Entrepreneurship & Regional Development. Voir l'appel sur le site de l'éditeur. Fiche de l'appel sur kerostig.

Potential topics

• Indigenous Theorizing and Concept Development: Building indigenous theories rooted in Chinese cultural, institutional, and geopolitical conditions, drawing from Confucian ethics, guanxi logics, or dynastic continuity as explanatory mechanisms
• Entrepreneurship as Constraint and Renewal: Exploring how institutional and cultural elements such as filial obligation, demographic legacies, and social perceptions shape entrepreneurial succession
• History-informed research: Taking a history-informed perspective to understand entrepreneurship and family business practices, including innovation through tradition
• Regional Heterogeneity: Incorporating regional institutional heterogeneity as a central explanatory factor in family entrepreneurship across China's varied development models and cultural norms
• Purpose in Chinese Business Families: Theorizing Chinese family offices and their approaches to transgenerational wealth through multi-enterprise portfolios and informal arrangements
• Gender and Patriarchal Paradoxes: Theorizing gendered pathways of leadership specific to the Chinese context and female successors' roles in patriarchal traditions
• Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Communal Orientation: Understanding how cultural embeddedness shapes responsibility, CSR, and legitimacy in Chinese family firms
• Geopolitical Turbulence as Institutional Hybridity: Theorizing how family firms navigate global turbulence under conditions of institutional hybridity and restricted learning opportunities

Timeline

• February 1, 2026: Extended abstract submission deadline for workshop participation
• March 1, 2026: Workshop acceptance notification
• April 11, 2026: Abstract deadline
• April 11, 2026: ERD Special Issue Workshop at Zhejiang University, China
• September 1, 2026: Full paper submission deadline

James Vardaman, University of Memphis

Feigu Zhou, University of Montevallo

Eric Liguori, Florida State University

Shuai Jin, Jiangsu University

Weiwen Li, Sun Yat-sen University

This special collection examines Chinese family businesses navigating intergenerational succession as they approach the 50-year anniversary of China's economic reforms. The collection addresses how family firms balance continuity with renewal as founders transfer leadership to successors, focusing particularly on socioemotional wealth—the noneconomic priorities that family firms pursue, such as preserving family control, maintaining family identity, and ensuring transgenerational continuity.

Chinese family firms provide a distinctive context for advancing family business theory. Unlike Western family enterprises that evolved within stable institutional environments, contemporary Chinese firms emerged after market reforms and now experience large-scale waves of succession amid shifts in economic institutions, governance expectations, and societal values. Successors assume leadership while navigating the coexistence of traditional Confucian principles emphasizing family continuity with modern market logics, professional management practices, and global stakeholder expectations.

Appel publié par Journal of Small Business Management. Lire l'appel complet sur le site de l'éditeur. Fiche de l'appel sur kerostig.

Potential topics

• Founder succession and leadership transfer in post-reform family firms
• Successor identity formation and legitimacy
• Preservation versus erosion of SEW during succession
• Tensions between family control and professionalization
• Emotional attachment, family identity, and transgenerational intentions
• SEW and strategic renewal
• Long-term consequences of Reform and Opening for family enterprise
• State–family business relationships over time
• Family and nonfamily employee experiences
• Shared identity and organizational identification

Timeline

• October 15, 2026: Extended abstract submission deadline
• May 1, 2027: Full manuscript submission deadline