Family Firms' Boards: Reflections Based on Theoretical Groundings

Boards of Directors is one of the most recurring topics in corporate governance literature. In the family firm realm, Boards of Directors have distinctive features compared to non-family firms; their functions and activities can differ significantly. Indeed, the degree of family involvement in the board and heterogeneity in directors' characteristics produce different effects on behaviors, decision-making processes, and performance. Applying diverse approaches, the continuous increase of research produces many results, making it hard to reflect on the development of this research area. We conduct an integrative literature review to renovate the knowledge infrastructure, starting from the outcomes of an exploratory bibliometric overview of 130 representative articles between 1988 and 2023 published in top-tier as well as specialistic academic journals. After describing the evolution of the research and identifying seminal publications as well as the most productive and cited authors and journals, using the co-citation tool, we unveil the main theoretical pillars and their interconnections, building a map of theoretical groundings and providing an understanding of the field's knowledge base. Revealing the conceptual linkages between the seminal works, we highlight how theories have evolved in Family Firms' Board of Directors' research. A reflexive knowledge work focused on the role of scholars in shaping research on family firms' boards of directors allows us to provide reflections based on theoretical groundings, rather than capturing them descriptively, and to identify future research directions.