Before I became the Editor-in-Chief, several special issues were developed to capture significant business phenomena in China. One such special issue focuses on Family Business in China, with Professors Xiaowei (Rose) Luo, Peter Ping Li, and Dali Ma as guest editors. After more than two years of preparation, it is finally published in the April issue of 2022. Congratulations!
This special issue contains an introductory piece, five research papers, and one perspective paper. These papers, taken together, paint a rich and intricate picture of the unique characteristics of Chinese family businesses and the challenges they face. For instance, the perspective paper (Chen et al., 2022) deconstructs the social and emotional wealth family firms own as their core properties, and the paper by He and Liu (2022) reveals the difficulty in balancing socioemotional wealth and legitimacy of family businesses. More importantly, these papers explore how private firms deal with the challenges to grow or become ‘hidden champions’. For example, Lei et al.'s (2022) paper reveals the importance of matching structural attributes and managerial cognition based on content, Lyu et al.'s (2022) paper discovers the relationship between political marriage and family firm growth, which they call ‘instrumental love’, and Zhu and Kang's (2022) paper studies how co-governance of intergenerational succession is related to innovation activities in Chinese family firms.
Without spoiling further, I will leave it to you to read this exciting new issue of MOR. The former MOR editor Arie Lewin also wrote an editorial that provides background for the imperatives behind this special issue.
I hope you find the special issue informative and insightful. Enjoy reading!
