As the field of family business matures, research increasingly focuses on actors outside the owner family. The most important non-family member a family firm can hire is arguably a non-family CEO. Given the limited pool of family members, family firms regularly hire such actors, yet, our knowledge of them is fragmented. Using a multidisciplinary systematic literature review, this article collects, organizes and structures current knowledge on non-family CEOs in family firms. The article proposes a research agenda by engaging in ‘gap-spotting’ and ‘assumption-challenging’, first outlining gaps in the existing literatures and proposing research questions to fill them, then identifying and problematizing three underlying assumptions in the literature. Finally, the article develops alternative assumptions to stimulate new research about non-family CEOs.

随着家族企业领域的成熟，研究越来越关注所有者家庭以外的参与者。家族企业可以雇用的最重要的非家族成员可以说是非家族首席执行官。鉴于家族成员的数量有限，家族企业会定期雇用此类演员，但是，我们对他们的了解是零散的。本文使用多学科的系统文献综述，收集，组织和构建了有关家族企业中非家族首席执行官的最新知识。本文通过参与“差距发现”和“假设挑战”提出了研究议程，首先概述了现有文献中的空白，并提出了研究问题来填补这些空白，然后确定了文献中的三个基本假设并对其进行了质疑。最后，