Family businesses and business families in cultural context: interdisciplinary updates for family business research

Purpose This article shows that business family and family business research is dominated by reductionist and biased concepts of culture that are in sharp contrast with recent advances in anthropology and the broader social sciences that would allow for more fine-grained analyses. Design/methodology/approach Through an inbound theorizing approach, state-of-the-art anthropological and sociological concepts of culture are introduced to family business research. Findings The resulting interdisciplinary update unveils that prevailing concepts of culture in family business research confuse cultures with countries or nations and neglect the processual constitution of culture. Originality/value The article advocates a research agenda emphasizing the social construction and reproduction of culture as well as the need to systematically draw on findings from anthropology and sociology so as to allow for better cross-cultural comparisons in the field of family business research.