Seminar: Family Business and Entrepreneurship Research

Participation Prerequisites

Participating students should be interested in family firms

Course Content

This seminar aims at preparing students for conducting academic research on family businesses. A specific focus will be on excelling in literature reviews.

The seminar will start with an introduction day that combines an input lecture with an in-class discussion. Topics will be the following:

• What are family businesses and what makes them unique?
• Theories to describe family businesses
• What is academic research – and what isn’t academic research?
• How to conduct a literature review?

The students will then form groups of two and choose a family business-related topic. Over the course of the seminar, their task is to conduct an academic literature review on the chosen topic and to briefly propose a research project based on it.

The mid-slot of the seminar will be dedicated to the following topics:

• Open discussion and feedback: What is working well? What are the challenges?
• Input lecture on “how to write a paper” and discussion

The students will then continue working on their literature reviews. The third and last slot of the seminar will be dedicated to presentations and discussions thereof.

Intended Learning Outcomes and Competencies

Upon completion of the course, you will be able to:

• Be aware of the specific relevance of family firms to both research and practice
• Understand characteristics of family firms and differences to non-family firms
• Become sensitive to the heterogeneity of family firms
• Learn about family firm theories and their applications
• Searching for scientific literature
• Using the literature for a scientific paper
• Writing a literature review
• Conducting interviews

Instruction Type

• Presence
• Online synchronous
• Online self-paced
• Hybrid

Form of Examination

Literature

Will be provided in class