Purpose

The field of scientific research on small and medium-sized family businesses has been growing exponentially and the aim of this paper is to systematize the body of knowledge to develop an agenda for the future.

Design/methodology/approach

Adopting comparative bibliometric analyses on 155 articles (from 1989 until 2018) the authors provide a systematic assessment of the scientific research about small family firms, unveiling the structure and evolution of the field. Bibliographic coupling, co-citation analysis and co-occurrence analysis are adopted to identify the most influential studies and themes.

Findings

Four clusters of research are reviewed: succession in family SMEs, performances of family SMEs, internationalization of family SMEs and organizational culture of family SMEs.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to the field of family SMEs by providing a systematic analysis of the scientific knowledge. Reviewing those clusters allows to providing avenues and reflections for future research and further practice.

中文翻译：

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中小号美吗？家族式中小企业研究的结构与演变

目的

中小型家族企业的科学研究领域呈指数级增长，本文的目的是系统化知识体系以制定未来议程。

设计/方法/途径

通过对 155 篇文章（从 1989 年到 2018 年）进行比较文献计量分析，作者对有关小型家族企业的科学研究进行了系统评估，揭示了该领域的结构和演变。采用书目耦合、共引分析和共现分析来确定最具影响力的研究和主题。

发现

回顾了四个研究集群：家族中小企业的继承、家族中小企业的绩效、家族中小企业的国际化和家族中小企业的组织文化。

原创性/价值

本文通过提供对科学知识的系统分析，为家族中小企业领域做出贡献。回顾这些集群可以为未来的研究和进一步的实践提供途径和思考。