Typologies of familial space in family firms

Over the years, family business and regional science scholars have developed an interest in exploring andunderstanding the relationship between the two research fields, typically, on how they influence eachother. In this article, we build on the family business and the regional context to question and explorehow family firms are locally embedded. We argue that the importance of local embeddedness offamily firms cannot be fully understood without untangling how and what family firms are locallyembedded in. Drawing on the relational spatial ontology and familial factors, and within the regionaldevelopment framework, we propose typologies of family firms’ relational spaces, thereafter, familialspaces – cognitive familial space, institutional familial space, social familial space, organisationalfamilial space and clientele/communal familial space. Where we define familial spaces as the relationalnetworks of varied functional relationships enabled by familial factors at the disposal of family firmsto explore. Based on a multidisciplinary perspective, we offer a specification of familial space andexplore how the regional context and family governance system can influence the familial spaces. Wemaintain that family firms whose resources and productive activities are anchored in specific localplaces, and who themselves are locally attached, may be more likely than any other organisationaltype to influence familial spaces to influence their (non) economic goals. We propose suggestions forfuture research.