Women entrepreneurship in family business: dominant topics and future research trends

PurposeThis article examines the dominant research topics that guide the literature on women's entrepreneurship in family businesses.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used performance and scientific network mapping analyses from bibliometric techniques. Performance analysis was used to identify the most influential journals, authors, countries, co-citation, multidimensional scaling (MDS), hierarchical cluster (HCA) and document analysis to identify dominant research themes.FindingsThe research results show that studies on women's entrepreneurship in family businesses are gathered in three clusters. The studies in the first cluster focused on family succession and women's roles. The themes of the succession process, gender bias, leadership and entrepreneurship in the second cluster are intense. Finally, in the third cluster, the themes of women leaders and identity construction dominate.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, new conceptualizations of female entrepreneurship from family businesses emerge over time (example: “fementerpreneur”); accepting and using these words takes time. For this reason, the authors may have missed the newly emerged concepts in the field of family businesses in the search strategy. Second, although MDS results are widely used in bibliometric research, other forms of MDS analysis may reveal different groups and clusters. Finally, bibliometric analysis is based more on retrospective and dominant themes in the most cited articles, with a heavy emphasis on the most cited papers. Hence, new articles and contributions can be equally important.Originality/valuePrevious studies have not examined the subject of women's entrepreneurship in family businesses. By addressing this issue and setting the agenda for future research, the authors contribute to the literature on women's entrepreneurship in family businesses.