Research

Family Business Review (FBR)
Family Business Review (FBR), was the first scholarly journal in the field and continues to shape the future as a top ranked journal in business.
Published by SAGE, FBR is devoted exclusively to exploration of the dynamics of family-controlled enterprise, including firms ranging in size from the very large to the relatively small. FBR is focused not only on the entrepreneurial founding generation, but also on family enterprises in the 2nd and 3rd generation and beyond, including some of the oldest companies in the world. In addition, the journal publishes interdisciplinary research on families of wealth, family foundations and offices.
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2086 Society: Applied Research
For more than 30 years, FFI has been a leader in advancing the field of family enterprise through its core strategies of education, research, and public awareness.
The 2086 Society was created in 2018 to reinforce FFI’s role as a leader in advancing the field of family enterprise through its core strategies of education, research, and public awareness — and to build on its mission to be the most influential global network of thought leaders in the field of family enterprise.

In 2020, two research areas are open for grant application.

1. 2086 Society Request for Proposals on “The Future of Work and Its Implications for Practice with Multi-generational Family Enterprises”

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2. The Role of the Advisor in Fostering Family Enterprise Governance Durability
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2019 Grant Recipients
Claudia Binz Astrachan

Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Art

Fabian Bernhard

EDHEC Business School

Anneleen Michels

Hasselt University

Torsten Pieper

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Matthias Waldkirch

EBS University

2086 Society Members
Patricia Annino

Rimon PC

John Davis

Cambridge Family Enterprise Group

Nancy Drozdow

CFAR

Judy Green

Family Firm Institute

Fredda Herz Brown

Relative Solutions, LLC

Paul Karofsky

Transition Consulting Group

Maya Prabhu

J.P. Morgan Private Bank

FFI/Goodman Study on Longevity in Family Firms:
Reframing the Dialogue
In 2007 FFI Fellow Joe Goodman made a generous contribution to FFI for the purposes of revisiting John Ward’s (1987) seminal study on family firm succession. An RFP was sent out and a grant was made to three researchers from the STEP Project (Babson). These researchers (Rob Nason, Babson College; Mattias Nordqvist, Jonkoping International Business School and Thomas Zelleweger, University of St. Gallen) then conducted a study over a three year period, with preliminary results presented at the FFI conference in Chicago.

This FFI/Goodman study questions the wisdom of considering longevity a function of maintaining the family business across generations vs. a new definition of longevity as the ability of the family as an enterprise to stay viable across generations, creating family legacies and new competitive futures for multiple.

This research has since resulted in an article, “From Longevity of Firms to Transgenerational Entrepreneurship of Families: Introducing Family Entrepreneurial Orientation”.

Available Here