Family Business Review Retrospective - Part II

Hello and welcome to the latest issue of the FFI Practitioner podcast. Hello, I'm Jordan Rich, and this is part two of a discussion of one of the most influential publications in the family enterprise field, the Family Business Review. In part one, we spoke with three of the original editors, instrumental in the launch and development of the Family Business Review. Today, we continue a discussion with three key people who more recently served as editors of the FBR and offer their perspective on how the Business Review has evolved, the challenges they faced in a rapidly changing environment, along with their thoughts on the growth and future of the FBR.

Joining us today, former editors Tyg Payne, Donald Neubom, and Dita Sharma. Let's start with you, Dita, when you were the editor. Talk a little bit about what issues were on your plate and what your vision was for the journal? First of all, this was from 2009 to 2017.

So that was my term in the editor role. And I'd served as associate editor for three years prior. So my view of FBR is from 2005 to 2017, but more from 2009 onwards. A couple of things at that time that seemed big.

One was the March issue was due the moment I took on and we had zero articles for that issue. So that was the immediate fire, fire, get something done here. The other one was more seriously, the other one was we're trying to run a marathon and a sprint with the same journal. So there was a lot of pressure from the practitioner saying, your googly goo doesn't make sense to us, tell us in one line what you learned.

And there is the academic legitimacy that goes with, don't be hasty, let's examine whether you did the process right, the literature review right, the methods right, the data collection right, before you tell us what you found. So we were trying to run the marathon and a sprint in the same space. You just can't do it. If you want to win at anything.

It either has to be focused on one or the other. So what we already had this family or the predecessor of FFI practitioner, and we tried to build a bridge between the two and a separation between the two. The second was legitimacy in the academic space. We are, or we were the premier journal in the family business space, but in the grand scheme of management, business literature, we were just a young little baby playing around.

So we needed that legitimacy so that more people would want to join the family business space, become a robust field of study. So that was the second. And third was family business as a context. Whether we call it a family enterprise or we call it a family business, we still need all the fundamental areas of study within that context.

Always the issue of expanding our boundaries, what are we not studying? What have we not studied? So those were the three kind of challenges what I saw at the moment. And my help was to somehow address, somehow make a dent in all those three.

Don Neubom, I'll go to you next. Tell us about your years of service and what were some of the challenges that you were facing at the time? You know, I think Joe and Dita and Ty really did a lot of heavy lifting for the journal. And, you know, over their tenures as editors, we saw really significant increase in the scholarly impact of the journals.

And, you know, in terms of impact factors, the impact factors of the journal, you know, grew and grew over their terms. And they really established FBR as the premier outlet for family business research. And so one of my visions was just to build and maintain the reputation that FBR had already created for itself and largely just keep the train on the rails. You know, that really was job one for me.

And I think I was largely successful, you know, on that front. I believe that, you know, the journal remains in a very good place in terms of reputation and impact. Another goal of mine was succession. You know, journals, just like family businesses, need a really strong succession plan.

You know, and that sort of started with me, you know, during Tighe's term, I was a senior associate editor, so I did special issues and things like that. So I got sort of dipped my toe in the water. When I took over the journal from TAIG in 2021, nearly all the associate editors who were under his editorship stayed on for my term. And I was really grateful they did because it was an outstanding team of really some of the leading scholars in the field.

I wanted to increase the strength of the bench of the editorial team as well. So I wanted to bring in some newer, younger scholars on the editorial team. So I invited Josh Daspit and Matthias Nordquist and Philip Seeger and Matthias Walcker to the AE team. And all four of them were great additions.

I'm really proud of the work that they've done for the journal. And Philip and Matthias Walcker should still remain on the editorial team today. And I believe they'll continue to be a part of the sort of FPR family for years to come. And similar to Dita, you know, one of my visions, too, was do what I call increase the size of the tent.

You know, she talked about the importance of bringing new scholars in to the fields who don't normally participate in the family business space. You know, just increase the boundaries of the field. And Jim Chrisman and Lloyd Steyer and Jess Chua were really successful that, you know, 20 years ago when they were hosting the series of the TOFI theories of family enterprises, special issues. I wanted to do some of that as well right is use the special issues to invite scholars who might not normally be involved in the family business field So we have folks from adjacent fields come and get exposed to family business research and contribute to our field And so we had a couple of special issues, one on psychological foundations of family businesses.

And then we had another history-informed special issue in family business research. And we brought in Lloyd Sedeby and Brian Silverman, who are just great scholars, to act as special issue editors. And so I think those intentions helped us increase the reach and footprint and impact of FBR. And it was my initial intention to do more of that.

Thank you for that answer. And I'll go to you, Ty. Tell us about your term of office as editor and give us some background, Ty. My term was in between Dita and Don.

And I did a three-year term, 2018 to the end of 2020. The vision that I had was, much like Don mentioned, was basically don't drop the ball. Data had things running. The metrics looked really good.

We had a lot of good scholars. We had submissions that were going up. Things were rolling along pretty well when I took over. And my whole goal was basically to maintain and continue to develop the journal the best that I could.

The challenge I felt at that point was that we needed to continue to get legitimacy as both a field and as a journal. And that meant for me, I felt like we needed to ensure that every article that came through was top notch, that there could be no question about the quality that we were putting out and that also that we could increase our legitimacy across the domain and reach into adjacent domains. We were largely, it seemed like to me, largely focused on basically governance issues related to family business.

And I felt like we were missing a lot of opportunities to kind of move into like the family studies area, the psychology area, the finance areas, and to try to broaden our domain, our footprint, if you will, into these other areas. And in doing so, also increase the pipeline because challenges I think we all experienced was just constantly trying to get quality work submitted and get them through the pipeline so that we could have a good issue every year. And it was always the it was always that first issue, I think, that was always challenging.

The first issue of the year was always a big challenge. I want to go back to Dita about achievements as editor. And you, Dita, had a long tenure. So tell me, were these challenges that we outlined earlier overcome?

And if so, how did you do that? I would say almost, because some are still pending items that we need to continue working on. FBR versus FFI practitioner, I think that's pretty clear. It's clear in the academic world.

It's hopefully clear in the advisory world. I haven't gone to FFI annual meeting in a bit, but when I did go regularly, there was always a question of, I don't read FBR, I don't understand FBR, but now we have a channel to say, if you understand practitioner, you're good. You're up to date with today's knowledge on family business that you need for your work. So I think that has been accomplished.

But I think that's also where I see one of the bigger opportunities. And we'll talk about that next later. As far as institutionalization or legitimacy within the academic world, I think we did accomplish it. We were not, if we went to the larger organization like the Academy of management, which attracts over 10,000 scholars from around the world.

We didn't have to teach ourselves to be on editorial panels and things like that. If there was something on entrepreneurship, as an editor, you would get invited to be sitting at the panel. So we had earned our spot there, which was very critical. And then on the metrics, I think both again, you guys spoke about it.

We are looked at as a serious journal now. So all that is going well. The expanding of boundaries, yes, I mean, like Dawn and Ty, in my nine years as editor, we had 11 special issues. At that time, I started with issues like, you know, accounting and family business, marketing and family business.

How do these fundamental disciplines look and feel different when we think about what theories still work and what needs to be challenged and improved? In short, the answer is yes, yes, yes on all the three, FBR versus practitioner, legitimization of the journal, and expanding boundaries. But none of those is fully done. It's a struggle for a journal like FBR, which has a real practitioner bent and need.

But we can, as an editor, we can only publish papers that get submitted. And we can only publish work that is credible and rigorous. And so while we would love to have papers that have strong practical implications, unless those kinds of papers are coming through our pipeline, it's very difficult to sort of influence the direction of the field unless you do it with a special call for papers. And the editor really has very little control over those sort of things, unfortunately, right?

We can sort of maybe guide individual papers and make suggestions for, you know, sharpening the practical implications of a particular paper. But for actually coming up with and pushing the journal towards more contemporary, you know, hot topics that my practitioners might be faced with, that's just really difficult, right? And the review process is so long you know it a year and a half two years And so journals just by their nature it seemingly going to be always behind maybe some practitioners in that sense And so it's a challenge.

And, you know, FBR is a relatively small journal. We still only get a couple hundred submissions a year, right? And so the extent of the pipeline is pretty narrow and shallow. So it's really hard to identify those, you know, the diamonds in the rough.

like you might want that have a big practical impact. Ty, let me ask this question of you. With the rising tide of information technology, AI, et cetera, is that changing the work of a journal like FBR, making things more available, I hope, more quickly? I think it's going to, or is, a mixed blessing to a certain extent and probably more so right now, a negative.

Basically, what I'm seeing, and this is coming from me being a field editor for general business venturing right now, I'm seeing a lot more submissions. The submission rate is seemingly higher. I'm getting more submissions, but the quality of those submissions is lower. And so what I'm seeing, I think AI do, is increase the productivity of certain scholars.

And I would say largely those would be international scholars making submissions because they can more quickly write a complete paper or draft a paper and submit it. But the quality is not there basically because AI models are basically garbage in, garbage out. You end up getting a lot of submissions that you have to deal with and you still have to process those submissions, but they're not finding their way to being published. And so I'm making a lot more desk reject decisions.

There's not adequate responses in the revision process. And so I think the AI problem on the submissions has been a bigger issue for editors, a bigger hindrance than a help. If at some point AI gets to the point where editors can rely on it to help them make decisions and write letters and such, I think we're a long way from that. But if that gets to the point where it helps us better process papers or reviewers better process papers, maybe there might be some kind of equilibrium found.

But right now I see it just being a negative. Dita and Don may differ in that opinion, but that's kind of what I'm seeing. Well, let's go to Dita for some input on the tech question and where it stands regarding journals like this. Dita?

I agree with Ty. When I'm tired, I can't think English. And there's lots of people like me. I'm really good in the morning.

Generally, sentences come out okay. But as I start getting tired, I mix up words. I misspeak words. So that part as an author, that has really helped.

The AI has really helped with that. It's like an RA, but whose English is whose first language. So that part, I can just say sharpen this, refine this, but it's my idea. It's not like I'm pulling ideas.

So as an author, if the authors use AI of what AI is able to deliver today, I think journal editors will get better input. If I start using as an author, if I start using AI to do the things that AI is stupid at, research questions. The thing doesn't know how to generate. I mean, it will generate.

It doesn't want us to. It doesn't want to look stupid, but it is right now. So in that case, I think smart authors can use it, and that would certainly enable the editors at the other end. But right now, we're not there.

Right now, it's the grind for the editors has increased. Just to say I submitted 20 articles this year, that sentence has increased. To say I submitted 20 usable articles this year is a whole different story. So absolutely, it will improve.

I mean, our tech geniuses are there and they will figure it out. But it's going to be a continuous catch up with where we should use it and where we should not. And Don, what's your take? I see you nodding your head.

Yeah, I completely agree. I think we've already talked about the authors using AI. You know, I'm a little concerned also about, you know, since the system is being overtaxed, you know, a bunch of volunteer reviewers and volunteer editors, you know, contribute to the journals. I'm just a fear that the tsunami of AI driven papers, you know, are overloading some, you know, some of the other journals, more mainstream journals are getting a ton of these papers on a regular basis.

And I just hope reviewers don't resort to outsourcing their job to AI models. It's not clear to me that we can prevent the use of it, but I think we need to provide some guidelines for authors and reviewers. First, I think a major thing that a lot of people haven't talked about is AI's ability to generate data sets. I'm really fearful about unscrupulous authors who can easily fabricate a data set in a matter of minutes, and it would be virtually impossible to uncover that in a review process.

That may be already happening, and we just don't know, right? I think that's a real concern that I have, and I'm not sure how we address that. Final go around. And this is your chance as former editors to wave the magic wand.

What would you like to see occur in the evolution of the FBR going forward? And I'll start with you, Don, and then we'll go around the horn and end with Dita in this case. What do you see for the future and hope for the future? The last 20 years have been good for family business research in general as a field.

It grown significantly publications in a wide variety of journals not just in family business journals And so but I think the field has largely reached a maturity stage right The actual growth in the number of publications across the entire spectrum of journals in the field, it seems to me has slowed pretty, it's slowed, it's plateaued. And I think impact factors for journals like FBR might be impacted by that because I think there's just fewer special issues on family business in mainstream journals than we saw in the last decade, for example.

And I think it's still really important for family business research to demonstrate its relevance outside our field. You know, FBR is a great journal. It's established in the field, but, you know, outside our world, I think there are still questions about legitimacy and rigor in the family business field. And we just need to continue to work hard to maintain the high standards and demand research excellence, you know, continue that push so that we build upon, the reputation and rigor and relevance that the journal has.

And I think that's going to be a continued battle for the next 10, 15 years. Well, thank you so much for your comments on that, Don. Let's go now to Tyg Payne to get your take on the future and what you'd like to see happen and what you think will happen. I agree with Don that fundamentally the goal and the future is heavily reliant on if we can maintain rigor and excellence, in particular relative to increasing levels of competition across journals.

We're increasingly battling for good, solid research papers in an increasingly crowded place. The domain is crowded. There's lots of submissions, and it's increasingly hard to get good reviewers, good editors, good papers to publish. I think the challenge is, can we maintain and continue to increase our visibility and notability and rigor moving forward?

There's a lot of hope that we're in a good position to continue to maintain our position, but at the same time, it will be challenging. The competition is high. There's journals from all over the world that are competing for the same papers, studies that we are competing for. And that's going to be difficult, but achievable.

I tend to be an optimist. And I think we have an opportunity. We have a big, big opportunity. And the opportunity I see is one, it's kind of a not so big.

It's something like, you know, you have a weekly or some like a FFI podcast, which is everyone knows to tune in on this half an hour thing and you get the, you know, so because people as in me, my students particularly, and even the younger advisors, we're seeing a generational transition within academia, but also so within the advisory committee, advisory practices. Those are the two primary focus of FFI. I'm retiring this year. All three that you spoke with earlier, they are already retired and well into their next world, which is advising for them, which means there are newer people in academia, both in terms of as educators, how we use and consume knowledge is different now.

Do we always want to have these fine print textual materials to read? Maybe, maybe not. Are there other ways to communicate the knowledge and that may be podcasts, sub-stacks, infographics, blogs. I mean, I'm not even up to speed with all the possibilities that are there.

So maybe embrace that as some other journals are embracing and go for it. Our strength is the possibility of family business scholars and practitioners to work closely together to identify what might be interesting research questions. After that, an academic doesn't need a practitioner very much because we know the process of good research well. But are we asking good, interesting questions?

Are there good, interesting questions that we're not asking? There has to be a way, even if it's the FFI practitioner, there has to be a way for practitioners to efficiently communicate to scholars what they are struggling with. So I think we do have that possibility. And what if FFI practitioner became the next Harvard Business Review?

It was suddenly available in airports around the world. If we say 70% of businesses are family businesses, why not? And then that becomes the rocket ship on which the academic journal rides rather than trying to do it the other way around or trying to run two different races. So that would be one possible way to do it.

Get better research questions. The last is my pet peeve. And I'll stop after that. And both Don and Ty know about it.

There is this thing called Financial Times Top 50. I'm a Canadian scholar, even though I live in Vermont. For us, all our 10-year promotion decisions are based on what you publish in that list, in journals in that list. Even in 2005, I wanted FBR to be on that list.

21 years later, I still want the same thing, or I want that list to become moot. So that would be what I would like for others to do. Our thanks again to former editors of the Family Business Review, Tyg Payne, Donald Neubom, and Dita Sharma. You've been listening to the FFI Practitioner Podcast.

Find out more at ffi.org. This is Jordan Rich. Thanks for listening.