Cash Holdings in Family Firms: Outlines of an Emerging Debate

Abstract The literature on cash holdings has gained increasing relevance within business studies, which highlights its pivotal role in determining a firm’s resource management strategy. In this study, we adopt a combination of bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review to analyse the development of literature on cash holdings and provide an overview of its theoretical and empirical evolution and identify future research paths. After collecting 46 documents from Scopus and Web of Science published from January 2011 to on 7th October 2024, we created and analysed a thematic map based on a co-word analysis to appreciate the form and content of academic discourse on the topic and investigated the content and main contributions of the 46 publications to understand the evolution of the themes discussed in the literature. Results show that family business studies are still anchored to the traditional topics of the research stream of cash holdings, such as corporate governance, and mostly employ agency theory. We found that current family business research and cash holdings only represent a first step in exploring the topic and act as forerunners for the investigation of another research stream – such as innovation/sustainability – or the employment of alternative theories – such as socioemotional wealth. Overall, we provide some insights for future research.