Mapping women's involvement in family firms: A review based on bibliographic coupling analysis

Abstract

Despite advances in recognizing women's influence in all spheres of life, society has not fully acknowledged women's role and influence in business. To address this gap, this review aims to map research on women's involvement in family firms (WIFF), the most common form of business entity worldwide, which appears to provide an enabling environment for women to act as leaders and entrepreneurs. First, through a systematic process, we select 225 papers identified from the Web of Science database and perform a bibliographic coupling analysis that explores the WIFF dataset with the support of clustering algorithms. The results of the review reveal five thematic clusters: (1) female entrepreneurs and family firms; (2) women in family-firm governance; (3) family–business dynamics; (4) women in business succession; and (5) temporal and spatial dimensions of women's involvement. Second, we supplement the bibliometric analysis with a review of the literature, which enhances understanding of the research topics and theoretical perspectives adopted, helping to develop an integrative framework and formulate new research questions that support the development of this promising field of research. Thus, this review provides a robust roadmap for further investigation of key issues in the field, which can help academics, policymakers and practitioners.