Journal of Small Business Management

Overview

The economic reforms initiated in 1978 fundamentally altered the trajectory of private enterprise in China. By loosening restrictions on private ownership and enabling market-oriented activity, the reform era created conditions under which family businesses could emerge, survive, and ultimately become one of the defining organizational forms shaping China’s economy (Jinglian & Shitao, 2014; Ross, 2023). Over the decades that followed, many of these firms evolved from founder-led ventures into large and influential enterprises that now occupy central positions within domestic and global markets.

Yet the historical conditions that enabled the rise of Chinese family firms also create a unique contemporary challenge (Hepburn et al., 2023). As we approach the 50-year anniversary of Reform and Opening, many founder generations are approaching or actively navigating succession. As leadership transfers unfold, questions once centered on founding, growth, and legitimacy are increasingly giving way to questions of continuity, identity, legacy, and preservation.

This timing is particularly important as succession in Chinese family firms raises questions extending beyond ownership transfer or governance design. Succession often involves renegotiating what aspects of the enterprise should endure, what should change, and whose values define the future of the firm (Penney et al., 2019; Swab et al., 2020; Vardaman & Montague-Mfuni, 2023). These issues bring socioemotional wealth (SEW) to the forefront (Lu et al., 2021; McLarty et al., 2026; Vardaman et al. 2025)

SEW perspectives suggest family firms pursue goals beyond economic performance, including preserving family control, maintaining family identity, sustaining social ties, protecting emotional attachment to the firm, and ensuring transgenerational continuity (Bracamonte et al., 2026; Swab et al., 2020). As Chinese family businesses enter second- and third-generation transitions, these noneconomic priorities may become increasingly salient and contested. Founders and successors may differ in the importance they attach to legacy preservation, family influence, entrepreneurial renewal, internationalization, professionalization, and social status.

At the same time, Chinese family firms provide a uniquely important context for advancing family business theory and, in particular, SEW scholarship. Unlike family businesses in many Western economies that have evolved across multiple generations within relatively stable institutional environments, most contemporary Chinese family firms emerged only after China's market reforms and are now experiencing large-scale waves of intergenerational succession. As a result, successors are assuming leadership amid shifts in economic institutions, governance expectations, family structures, and societal values. Traditional Confucian principles emphasizing family continuity, filial piety, and hierarchical authority remain influential, yet these norms increasingly coexist with modern market logics, professional management practices, global stakeholder expectations, and changing attitudes toward gender and inheritance.

This special collection in Journal of Small Business Management seeks research that advances socioemotional wealth perspectives in Chinese family businesses. We welcome conceptual, quantitative, qualitative, mixed-method, and historical approaches. Topics include, but are not limited to: