Introducing the New Editorial Team

Abstract

The European Journal of Family Business (EJFB) was founded in 2011 with the name Revista de Empresa Familiar, changing its name to the current EJFB in 2016. As a result, the year 2021 marks the 10th anniversary of this journal, which provides an appropriate occasion to share our vision for the direction of the journal, identifying some priorities for the coming years.

We inherit a journal that wants to be a platform through which to explore new perspectives of family business research, enhancing the communication between academia and practice. We aim to support rigorous research with practical interest for family firms and entrepreneurial families while also nurturing new and overlooked lines of research that might deepen our understanding of the family firm field. We envision EJFB as a point of convergence where the rich heterogeneity of the family business realm presents competing perspectives, from which scholars and practitioners can question, enrich and extend the dialogue between academia and practice. We are also committed to fostering conversations in different fields that work in the broad domain of family business, welcoming scholarship from affiliated fields.

In addition to research papers and reviews, we encourage the submission of articles that provide new ideas or perspectives by building upon existing or new theories to understand contemporary trends related to enterprises in general and family firms in particular, point/counterpoint debates, articles with a practical orientation and practitioner commentaries. Overall, we look forward to serving and bridging the gap between research and practice by facilitating communication in both directions. The journal will feature a new section entitled Commentary where family business practitioners can write about their experiences. We believe that their comments will help ‘theorists and researchers keep practice in mind when they do their work’ (Vought et al., 2008, p. 1112). The aim of this section is to enhance the research agenda by learning scientifically from practice and also applying ‘the theoretical and empirical research findings back to practice’ (Strike, 2012, p. 168).

We believe this new editorial team is particularly well suited to the tasks of supporting research of family firms for its applicability to practice and helping practitioners advance family firms' knowledge from a research perspective. We therefore look forward to working with a global community of family business scholars and practitioners.

In concluding this introduction, the Editorial Team of EJFB wants to thank the journal’s founder and outgoing editor, Dr. Vanesa Guzman-Parra, who saw the need for a journal dedicated to advancing research on family firms. We also extend a heartfelt thank you to the Editorial Board for the trust they have placed in us as the new Editorial Team. We would also like to thank our Managing Editor J. Roberto Vila and UMA Editorial for their continued and substantial assistance that has enabled the journal to reach a significant milestone: its 10-year anniversary! We also extend our gratitude to all our reviewers, readers and authors, occasional and regular, whose support of EJFB is acknowledged and greatly appreciated. We look forward to reading your insights in future issues.

Editor-in-Chief Dr. Amaia Maseda, University of the Basque Country   Deputy Editors Dr. Vanessa Diaz-Moriana, University of Balearic Islands Dr. Remedios Hernández-Linares, University of Extremadura Dr. Valeriano Sanchez-Famoso, University of the Basque Country