Purpose: Drawing on indigenous theory of Ibn Khaldun, the rise and fall of States, this paper explores the agency of women entrepreneurs in family business in Bahrain and the underlying enablers in supporting and facilitating the exercise of this agency. This study attempts to move beyond the Western-centric studies to reflect and bring to light the unique institutional settings of the Gulf States.

Design/methodology/approach: The research builds on a rich qualitative single case of a family business based in Bahrain. The single case study methodology was motivated by the potential for generating rich contextual insights. Such an approach is particularly valuable to gain a more holistic and deeper understanding of the contextualized phenomenon and its complexity.

Findings: In this study the authors show how women entrepreneurs take two different paths to enter and become involved in the family business, the barriers they are subjected to and the active role they play in dismantling the challenges to the extent that they become the main mediators between the family business and central institutions in society.

Originality/value: By incorporating indigenous theory with Western family business concepts, the study extends existing understanding of women entrepreneurs in family business by underscoring the agency that women entrepreneurs have in “doing context” and the role that women play in strengthening common cause and destiny within the family and the business by building and drawing on different forms of loyalty.

The socio-emotional wealth perspective is a framework widely used to examine managerial decisions, particularly within the field of family business. We evaluate, refine, and validate the FIBER 27-item scale developed by Berrone et al. (2012) as a psychometric instrument to measure the socioemotional wealth construct (SEW), defined as affective endowment embedded by family owners in their business. The findings suggest that SEW is a superordinate multidimensional construct that captures socioemotional utilities in family firms and their impact on financial performance.

This paper focuses on hybrid board governance and the challenges faced by the board of directors when implementing social impact measurements. Interviews with 36 board chairs and general secretaries in social hybrids in Sweden show that while boards support social impact measurements, they face obstacles in implementing them. Drawing on the institutional logics framework, we identify three main reasons for these implementation problems. First, amid field level regulations focusing on cost efficiency, boards find it difficult to switch to a social impact that lacks a single metric that can be measured annually. Second, board members struggle to find sufficient time when they serve on a pro bono basis, and it is difficult to hold them accountable when limited progress occurs. Finally, acknowledging board practice variation, we highlight the need to distinguish between “beneficiary-driven” and “membership-driven” social hybrids. In the former, boards face the challenge of operationalizing the long-term benefits for end beneficiaries; in the latter, interactions with members are so operationally focused that boards struggle to maintain a long-term agenda for implementing social impact measurement. Given these challenges, we propose that future research should explicitly incorporate the board level in theorizing how hybrid organizations manage institutional logics and performance measurement.

The role of organizational resilience enabling firms to respond to adversity and survive has become ever more critical in the wake of an increasingly unpredictable external environment. Yet, while we understand the importance of resilience in responding to a major adversity, we have little appreciation for how firms are affected and react when facing multiple adversities over time, or how multilevel factors might impose on this process. These are crucial issues given that adversities are not necessarily single, isolated, or infrequent episodes. By studying a long-established family firm in the United Kingdom that experienced four major adversities, we identify the process that enabled it not only to survive but also to thrive. In this qualitative study, we introduce the notion of organizational fortitude to describe the approach that a firm develops to cope with the challenges of multiple unexpected adversities and highlight how multilevel factors combine to foster organizational fortitude.

This study draws on attribution theory to examine how and by what means the firm's top management team, board members, and owner(s) (i.e., the strategic apex) shape disclosure strategies. Drawing on interviews and archival data spanning six years, we conduct a case study of a financially distressed private family-owned media group. Unique access to these data allowed us to peer into the disclosure strategy formation process that typically takes place behind closed doors in private firms. Our findings show that financial distress preceded the formation of the disclosure strategy and the voluntary disclosure practices designed to satisfy financially powerful stakeholders, and that internal whistleblowers act as a low-cost disclosure tool to inform financially weaker stakeholders. In addition, the development of the disclosure strategy is strongly influenced by the strategic apex, which forms collaborative teams, organises stakeholders and their information needs, and meticulously manages and controls the content and timing of voluntary disclosures. Our findings also suggest that a tightly knit disclosure strategy and voluntary disclosure practices are used to influence rather than inform, to manage stakeholder interactions, and to influence public opinion.

The purpose of this article is to review the body of the literature on the role of individual accountants in the context of family firms, synthesize the findings, outline directions for future research, and to present an integrative framework that summarizes these directions. The study utilizes a systematic literature review approach and is guided by three overarching questions related to the field's development, a reflection on current state-of-the-art research, and an outlook for the field's future paths. The questions are answered through the mapping and analysis of 39 key articles over a 20-year period. We show central patterns in theory, data, methods, and findings. Our review reveals that the literature is scattered, and that the role of accountants is found to be context dependent. In existing research, an accountant tends to have the roles of a traditional bean counter, a decision-maker, an advisor, and a protector and mediator. Scholars also show that an accountant influences various organizational outcomes in family firms. The review further reveals that accountants can play a key role in accounting- and strategy-related decisions with impact on family firm's survival and growth. We offer a map of the research on accountants in family firms and an integrative framework. This work does not only highlight the importance of an accountant's role in family firms but it also allows us to identify numerous research gaps and a pathway for future research in terms of methods, theories, and models.

Plain English Summary: This systematic literature review puts a spotlight on the role of the individual accountant in family firms. Our review reveals that accountants take four distinct roles in family firms: a traditional bean counter, a decision-maker, an advisor, and a protector and mediator. Our review further shows that accountants play a key role in accounting and strategy-related decisions of consequence for family firms. We also outline areas where additional research efforts can help to generate a better understanding of how, when, and why individual accountants, in addition to their accounting function, matter for the family firms that employ them. The principal implication of this study is that research should embark on further exploration of the individual accountant in the family firm context and employ diverse methods and theories in doing so.

Professionalization has become ubiquitous among a broad range of organizations, promising increased efficiency and legitimacy. However, extant research depicts professionalization mostly as a binary change and largely ignores its temporal and processual nature, resulting in a lack of insights into how professionalization unfolds and how organizations deal with its inherent tensions. Therefore, we take a processual perspective on professionalization, studying it as a transformation toward a more rationalized, managerialized, and formalized organization through multiple practice adoption. Relying on a longitudinal single case study of a Swedish family firm that professionalized its business and family ownership domains, our processual analysis reveals unique types of professionalization and four practice interaction mechanisms through which organizations deal with tensions in the professionalization process. We contribute by conceptualizing a process model of professionalization, casting light on practice interaction mechanisms, and outlining implications of professionalization for organizational goals.