To define research and statistical methods needed for relevant research and the development of the family business field, this article reviews the past 30 years of analytic and statistical methods used by family business researchers. The article explores the many reasons for studying research...

Structural equation modeling (SEM) has become a mainstream method in many fields of business research, but its use in family business research remains in its infancy. This lag in SEM's application holds especially true for partial least squares SEM (PLS-SEM), an alternative to covariance-based...

Globalization has become an imperative and is no longer avoidable as a strategic choice for family businesses. However, globalization strategies are far from the norm among small and medium-sized family enterprises. This article reviews the main drivers for globalization, highlights the distinct...

Are family-owned companies perceived more positively by consumers than their non-family analogues, as has been proposed by family business scholars? A multiplicity of anecdotal clues as well as theory and some empirical evidence support the proposition that family firms enjoy a consumer-based...

In the social science disciplines, the assumption that the data stem from a single homogeneous population is often unrealistic in respect of empirical research. When applying a causal modeling approach, such as partial least squares path modeling, segmentation is a key issue in coping with the...

Applications of the partial least squares (PLS) path modeling approach—which have gained increasing dissemination in business research—usually build on the assumption that the data stem from a single population. However, in empirical applications, this assumption of homogeneity is...

Since its first introduction in the Schmalenbach Business Review, Hahn et al.’s (2002) finite mixture partial least squares (FIMIX-PLS) approach to response-based segmentation in variance-based structural equation modeling has received much attention from the marketing and management...

This prologue to the special issue documents and discusses the current family business research literature on strategy, ownership, governance and the socio-psychological dimension. The articles in this special issue represent theoretical and empirical research using micro and macro databases...