LAUSR

Anyone attending the annual conference of the Academy of Management (AoM) has a sense of the size and scope of the field of management. With nearly 20,000 members spanning 120 countries, AoM is aptly described as a “big tent” (George, 2014). By definition, all members of the AoM identify themselves as management scholars. Most members, however, more closely identify with one or a few subfields of management (e.g., strategic management, organizational behavior) and many may also identify with fields or disciplines that reside outside of management (e.g., economics, finance, marketing) or even outside of business (e.g., anthropology, psychology, sociology). By offering a choice of two of the 25 Divisions or Interest Groups (DIGs) as part of the registration fees, AoM acknowledges the varied interests of its members and encourages cross-disciplinary research. With no DIG solely focused on its domain of study, family business scholarship mirrors this diversity of interests, addressing issues across the domain of management. Despite this, family business, until about a decade ago, was largely absent at AoM conferences. For example, in 2004, only five of the 1,200 sessions of AoM featured family business research; these were primarily found in the Entrepreneurship Division’s preconference workshops. Since then, smaller gatherings like IFERA (International Family Enterprise Research Academy) and FERC (Family Enterprise Research Conference) emerged as important venues for family business scholars to exchange their research, develop their networks, and advance the field. As these have grown, scholars have acknowledged the importance of these gatherings but have also expressed concerns regarding the tendency of family business researchers to only talk among themselves (Zahra & Sharma, 2004). Responding to these concerns, family business scholars have increased their engagement across the AoM since 2004. At the 2017 AoM conference, family business research was featured in 13 of the AoM’s 25 DIGs and represented 50 of the 438 accepted papers or 12 of 109 paper sessions within the Entrepreneurship Division alone. Given that family firms are the dominant organizational form, there is still a long way to go before the AoM conference adequately reflects the research attention these organizations deserve and, in turn, help narrow the gap between management research and practice that has bothered many management scholars for decades (e.g., Ghoshal, 2005; Hambrick, 1994; Rynes, Bartunek, & Daft, 2001; Sharma, 2010; Vermeulen, 2007). Nevertheless, the boundary-spanning nature of family business research is clearly evidenced. As we highlight in Table 1, there appears to be wide-ranging opportunities for scholars to contribute across the spectrum of management by developing stimulating research programs in their various domains of interest using family enterprises as a platform for discovery and examination of important phenomena. Indeed, being mindful of the tendency of family business scholars to borrow from other disciplines more than giving back (Shepherd, 2016; Wortman, 1994; Zahra & Sharma, 2004), we hope to point to the potential power of a reciprocating mindset as we move forward. Consider agency theory, for 758712 FBRXXX10.1177/0894486518758712Family Business ReviewHolt et al. editorial2018