Crisis management in family businesses – a comprehensive model and research agenda

Abstract

Crisis management is of specific importance for family businesses. However, in spite of the need for research, this topic still receives insufficient scholarly atten-tion. In order to encourage scholars to dedicate more efforts to this topic, I first argue why crisis management is of specific importance for family businesses. Second, I argue that there are important differences between crisis management in family and non-family businesses. I introduce the comprehensive model of crisis management provided by Pearson and Clair (1998) and explain why I found it to be the most suitable model to draw upon. Then, I point out the pro-cess elements in this model where I expect family businesses to show specific behavior. Third, I conclude with a set of propositions that relate to these process elements. This study ends with a call for research on this topic