Family Business in Emerging, Developing, and Transitional Economies:The relevance of context

Currently, the vast majority of family business studies have mostly focused on developed economies (e.g. North America and Europe). Moreover, theories in the family business literature are often developed based on particular points of view (e.g. Anglo-American) and tested in developed economies. This limits our understanding of family firms around the world as the contexts where they have been founded, developed and operated may differ substantially. Therefore the validity, reliability and applicability of existing theories may be questioned. While recent studies have attempted to resolve this issue by focusing on culture in terms of its effects on family entrepreneurial behavior and family firm heterogeneity, (e.g. Discua Cruz and Howorth, 2008; Gupta and Levenburg, 2010; Rosa et al., 2014) and by relating family firms and their geographical context (Basco, 2015), we still know little about family businesses in developing, emerging and transitional economies.