Keywords

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Introduction

Family businesses are very important to every economy in the world. In fact, a greater proportion of the micro, small, and medium-sized (MSM) enterprises in the world are family businesses. Consequently, the last two decades has seen a tremendous surge in the interest in family business research in the management field. In fact, Sharma (2004) estimated that the number of family business articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals increased from 33 in 1989 to more than 300 by the end of 2003. The number is even larger from 2004 to the present, judging by the increase in family business articles published in top-tier journals not dedicated to family business research and the sheer number of special issues on family business research in journals such as Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Business Venturing, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, and Journal of Business Research, to name a few. In fact, between 2004 and 2015, there have been 25 special issues on research focusing on family businesses, excluding those in specialty journals devoted to family business research—Family Business Review, Journal of Family Business Strategy, and Journal of Family Business Management. Moreover, between 1998 and 2014, there have been 855 articles published in Family Business Review alone, while 146 articles have further been published in top-tier management journals (Evert, Martin, McLeod, & Payne, 2015). Despite this burst in family business research globally, the quantity of research focusing on African is insignificant. Thus, there is a dearth of knowledge on family businesses in Africa, despite their prevalence in the economies of the countries in the continent.

The productivity of family business research in Africa is considered to be not only low but also of poor quality. The low productivity of family business scholarship in the African continent may be attributable to the state of the management profession in general in Africa. Several researchers have argued that management research in and from Africa is often poor in quality (Zoogah & Nkomo, 2013), and as a result, does not tend to be accepted for publication in reputable international journal outlets. The low productivity of family business research in Africa may also stem from the fact that most editors and editorial board members of international management journals lack familiarity with research using data from Africa (Zoogah & Nkomo, 2013). The poor state of family business research productivity in Africa may also be due to the fact that African scholars usually confuse family business research with research on MSM enterprises. Although most MSM businesses in Africa are family businesses, family business research is different from MSM enterprises research because of the intersection of the family and business in the former.

The purpose of this chapter is to review the research on family business in Africa, focusing on the definitional issues, theoretical perspectives used, publication outlets, topics studied, regional or country focus of the studies, and what the studies tell us about the state of family business research. This would allow us to take stock of topic areas and/or regions where research on family business is lacking in Africa and to encourage researchers to turn attention to those areas. The review would also enable us to understand the type of knowledge that is being produced on and about family businesses in Africa. Since Africa’s share in knowledge generation in the management literature is very small relative to other regions of the world (Nkomo, 2011; Zoogah, Peng, & Woldu, 2009), we expect that the literature on family business in Africa will also be small relative to the extant family business literature globally. Although the quality of research in any particular field and region is the primary enhancer of our theoretical and practical knowledge in the field, the quantity is also important in generating knowledge about a particular phenomenon in a region. Consequently, the quantity and quality of research on family business in Africa would encourage knowledge creation and development on the continent.

What Is a Family Business?

Defining what a family business is has been a challenge to the bourgeoning field of family business studies, and the debate continues unabated. The definition of a family business is further complicated by the fact that family businesses are not monolithic when we consider involvement of the family in the business. However, it is very important to clearly determine what a family business is, as it would “assist in building a cumulative body of knowledge” (Sharma, 2004, p. 3). Several family business researchers have tried to define a family business. Kritzinger and Vorster (1997, p. 119), investigating a family farm business in South Africa, defined a family business as follows: “business ownership is combined with managerial control in the hands of business principals; principals are related by kinship or marriage; family members (including principals) provide capital to the business; family members do farm work; business ownership and managerial control are transferred between the generations over time and, the family lives on the farm.” Anderson and Reeb (2003) define a family business as a firm whose founder and/or any of the founder’s family members serves on the board of directors. Chua, Chrisman and Sharma (1999, p. 25) define a family business as a “business governed and/or managed with the intention to shape and pursue the vision of the business held by a dominate coalition controlled by members of the same family or a small number of families in a manner that is potentially sustainable across generations of the family or families.” Morck and Yeung (2004) consider a business to be a family business when the largest group of shareholders comes from a specific family that controls at least 10 % of voting shares. Villalonga and Amit (2006) further argue that a business is a family business when the founder and/or any of the founder’s family members is not only part of the board of directors but also the largest shareholder or voteholder and controls a minimum of 20 % of the voting shares. Zellweger, Nason, Nordqvist, and Brush (2011, p. 3) define a family business as “one controlled by a family through involvement in management and ownership coupled with a transgenerational vision for the firm.” In a recent study of South African Indian family-owned businesses, Bawa (2006, p. 167) defined a family business as “any business venture owned or operated by an individual, couple(s) or family.” Other researchers have also focused on characteristics such as effective control of the firm and the intent to keep the firm in the family (Shankar & Astrachan, 1996); family ownership, the involvement of the family in management, and making succession decision (Chrisman, Chua, & Litz, 2004); and the desire of the family to preserve their affective needs or the socioemotional wealth, and the pursuit of nonfinancial outcomes (Gomez-Mejia, Cruz, Berrone, & De Castro, 2011).

From all these definitions, there are two main distinguishable underlying characteristics of family firms as compared to nonfamily firms: family ownership and control of the firm, and family members’ involvement in the firm’s management and decision-making process. Despite these similarities of family businesses that distinguish them from nonfamily businesses, the control of voting shares percentage test, as proposed by Morck and Yeung (2004) and Villalonga and Amit (2006), clearly indicates that family businesses are not the same. Consequently, several researchers have not only noted but distinguished different family businesses by using terms such as “family-owned,” “family-managed,” “family-owned and managed,” and “family-controlled” (Gomez-Mejia et al., 2011; Shankar & Astrachan, 1996). Thus, when using the percentage of voting shares test, it would be more appropriate to refer to those family businesses as family-controlled businesses as opposed to family-owned businesses. As will be presented later in this chapter, most family businesses in Africa could be classified as family-owned rather than family-managed or family-controlled. As a result, they are more likely to be defined by focusing on ownership of the businesses and the control of managerial decision-making.

Methodology

Although the family business field is multi-disciplinary, it is also a specialized field of study. As a result, to search for the literature on family business studies in Africa, we did not exclude any field of study in business (broadly construed to include management, finance, marketing, operations and supply chain management, information technology or systems, etc.) and the social sciences. We also did not include a time limit for studies on family businesses in Africa. However, we excluded book publications and chapters in books. We conducted a comprehensive search of the following databases that provide information on articles published in both academic and practitioner journals: EBSCOhost Complete Databases, JSTOR, LexisNexis Academic, EconLit, Emerald, ProQuest Direct, Sabinet (this database covers South Africa and many other African Journals), African Journals Online (AJOL), and Google Scholar. We then used the following keyword combinations for the search: family business AND Africa, family firms AND Africa, family enterprises AND Africa, family business AND sub-Saharan Africa, family firms AND sub-Saharan Africa, and family enterprises AND sub-Saharan Africa. We also included a combination of family business, family firms, and family enterprises AND the major countries in Africa such as South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana.

Results

Our search yielded 29 articles that have been published on family businesses in Africa. The articles spanned from 1985 to 2015, indicating an average of less than one article per year over the 30-year period. It should be noted that some journals that are specific to various African countries may not be indexed in the databases searched, so the number of articles found may underestimate the total number of articles on family businesses in Africa. When we sorted the articles over time, we found that most of the articles were published after 2000. While 12 of the articles were published between 2000 and 2009, 14 articles were published between 2010 and 2015. This shows that interest in family businesses research in and about Africa has been a recent phenomenon. This is consistent with interest and productivity in general management research in Africa (Zoogah & Nkomo, 2013).

Publication Outlets

Table 3.1 shows the journal outlets where family business research in Africa has been published. The 29 articles were published by 19 journals over the 30-year period. There were a mixture of journals with a focus on business-related (e.g., entrepreneurship, general management, finance, and operations management) and social science-related disciplines (e.g., sociology, migration, and geography). It is also worth noting that some of the articles were published in family business specialty journals like Family Business Review and the Journal of Family Business Strategy. Most of the journals are internationally recognized journals that publish high-quality research in business and social sciences. There were only two African journals on the list, namely, South African Journal of Business Management and Journal of African Business, with the former publishing six of the articles, which represented 20.7 % of the articles in total. This shows that South Africa dominates in the knowledge production of family business research in Africa. The results further show that contrary to the general perception about low-quality research in and about Africa in general management, the articles focusing on family business are of high quality.

Table 3.1 Frequency of family business articles published in journals
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Definition and Operationalization of Family Business

Table 3.2 presents the definition and/or operationalization of family business in the articles. More than half (51.7 %) of the articles did not provide an explicit definition of family business. Presumably, the authors assumed that readers know what they call a family business. For the articles that defined family business, almost all of them mentioned the following three criteria:

Table 3.2 Definition of family business in studies focusing on Africa
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  1. 1.

    Family ownership of the business. There was no explicit mention of percentage threshold for equity or shares ownership by the family in most of the articles, except for four articles that indicated that a single family should own at least 51 % of the business. These four studies were conducted by Van der Merwe and colleagues (Farrington, Venter, Eybers, & Boshoff, 2011; Van der Merwe, 2009a, 2009b; Van der Merwe, Venter, & Farrington, 2012), who apparently relied on the same definition for all their articles;

  2. 2.

    Family involvement in management and/or family members involvement in the business either as members of the board of directors or as employees; and

  3. 3.

    Inter-generational transfer of the ownership and/or management of the business over time.

The definitions provided in the articles indicate that at least more than a 50 % ownership of a business is required to be considered a family business in the African setting. Although there may be family-controlled businesses in Africa where an ownership of 10 % or 20 % may be required for it to be considered a family business, it is the exception rather than the rule.

In terms of operationalizing or measuring “family business” in the studies, several of the articles complained of the lack of a national database in their countries from where they could easily source data for family business research. As a result, the articles used various means of identifying a family business. At least more than one-third (37.9 %) of the articles conducted conceptual or qualitative studies, so they did not explicitly measure family business. While some of these qualitative studies relied on known family businesses for their research, others did not indicate how they determined a business to be a family business. There were also challenges with the operationalization of family business in the articles that undertook quantitative empirical research. Almost all the articles using quantitative empirical research methods relied on questionnaire surveys except Vijverberg (1992), who used an archival data from the Living Standards Surveys of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Most of the data for the quantitative empirical studies were derived from diverse sources including, but not limited to, surveys of businesses published in a national/country business directory, companies listed on national stock exchanges including IPO firms, local chambers of commerce/industry, the UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys, and regional immigration data. Some of the empirical surveys were administered to family businesses that were identified through referrals, while others were asked specific questions mirroring the definition of family businesses used in the articles.

Regional Focus of Studies

Table 3.2 further presents the regional or country focus of the family business studies. The information from the table indicates that 11 articles focused on family business issues in Southern Africa, with the largest number (10), which constitutes 34.5 % of the total number of the articles, dealing with family businesses issues in South Africa. The combination of the findings from the publication outlets with the regional/country focus of the studies clearly reinforces Mouton’s (2010) study that South Africa dominates the African continent in social science (including business) research productivity. West Africa and East Africa follow with six and five articles, respectively. The West African region is dominated by studies focusing on Ghana with five articles, while Kenya and Uganda were the sole emphases of the articles covering East Africa. It should be noted that four articles focused on Africa in general, while the other three were about family businesses in North Africa (Egypt, Morocco, North Sudan, and Tunisia).

Topics Studied

Table 3.3 shows the topical focus of the family business studies in Africa. The studies are dominated by social capital, networks, and social networking; family systems (e.g., kinship, family social structure, culture, family relationships, family moral support, and family involvement); and resources and capabilities (physical resources, accumulation, mobilization, utilization, human capital, and managerial experience). These three topical areas constituted more than two-fifths (43.2 %) of issues discussed in the articles. The next important area of interest in the articles was succession, covering 10.8 % of the issues. Thus, more than half (54.1 %) of the topics studied fall under these four topical areas. This is understandable, as the collectivistic social system in Africa encourages relationship building, and is steeped in the extended family system and kinship ties (Acquaah & Eshun, 2010; Khayesi et al., 2014; Khuval et al., 2009). Social networking, social capital, and family system are therefore natural issues that come up in the discussion of family businesses in Africa. Resources and capabilities are also important to family businesses in Africa because of the weak economic structures, institutional voids (Khanna & Palepu, 2006), and the prevalence of corruption. Moreover, succession issues become prominent, as they do not concern only immediate siblings as pertains in the Western world, but involves an extended definition of the family, which consists of siblings (who may come from different mothers because of the prevalence of polygamy), cousins, aunts, and uncles, who may trace their ancestry to a matriarch or a patriarch several generations before.

Table 3.3 Coverage of research topics
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Other notable topical areas studied in the articles were strategy (business and manufacturing) and corporate governance (board size, board structure, and board independence). What is interesting about the topical information in Table 3.3 is that 8 out of the 14 topical areas listed have fewer than two articles investigating those topics. Even the most popular topics— social capital/social networking, family systems, and resources and capabilities—have only six, five, and five articles, respectively, devoted to them. In fact, critical areas in the management of family businesses such as human resources management, organizational behavior, and leadership are poorly represented in the list in Table 3.3. This may be due to the limited number of empirical articles investigating family business issues in Africa. This shows that Africa lacks enough literature on family businesses that would provide us with the knowledge base to make definitive conclusions about family business issues in the continent.

Theoretical Focus

Several theoretical constructs have been used in the study of family businesses globally. They include systems theory (Gersick et al., 1997; Pieper & Klein, 2007), agency theory (Chrisman et al., 2004; Schulze, Lubatkin, & Dino, 2003), stewardship theory (Davis, Allen, & Hayes, 2010), stakeholder theory and socioemotional wealth perspective (Gomez-Mejia et al., 2011; Zellweger & Nason, 2008), resource-based view (RBV) of the firm (Habbershon & Williams, 1999; Sirmon & Hitt, 2003), social capital theory (Acquaah, 2012; Arregle, Hitt, Sirmon, & Very, 2007), organizational justice (Lubatkin, Lubatkin, Ling, & Schulze, 2007), social exchange theory (Carmon, Miller, Raile, & Roers, 2010), strategic orientation (Acquaah, 2011a), and governance (Gnan, Montemerlo, & Huse, 2015).

Table 3.4 shows that of the 24 empirical studies on family businesses in Africa, 11 or approximately 46 % did not explicitly identify the theoretical lens being used for the study. It is striking to note that 8 of those studies were quantitative in nature. Of the 13 articles that identified a theoretical focus for their studies, several used multiple theories. The most popular theories used in the articles were social capital/network theory with 7 articles, and the RBV of the firm with 4 articles. This is consistent with the topical areas studied and is a function of the sociocultural and economic systems in Africa. Three articles relied on agency theory, but did so in a corporate governance environment, while 2 articles used the strategic orientation perspective. Other theoretical perspectives used include strategic leadership, stewardship, management control, development economics, and system psychodynamic. The findings about the theoretical focus of the articles clearly indicate that more needs to be done. Research grounded in theory allows for critical knowledge production and development. In fact, as stated by Suddaby (2014), theory leads to knowledge accumulation, and provides us with the ability not only to create new reality but also to legitimize the knowledge we produce. It is therefore important for family business studies in Africa to be grounded in theory. It should further be noted that only a few of the theoretical perspectives that have been used in investigating the activities of family business in the Western world have been applied to the African context.

Table 3.4 Summary of family business empirical studies in sub-Saharan Africa
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Methodological Issues

The methodology used in investigating a particular phenomenon is very important in enhancing the knowledge that is produced and the conclusions that could be derived from the studies. Of the 24 empirical articles on family business in Africa, 5 used qualitative research methods in analyzing the data, while 19 used quantitative research methods (see Table 3.4). The studies that utilized qualitative research methods used techniques such as case analysis and ethnographic field studies. The quantitative research studies relied mostly on regression techniques such as correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, logistic regression, two-stage least squares (2SLS), and three-stage least squares (3SLS). Other quantitative methods used in analyzing the data were descriptive statistics, t-tests, bootstrapping, and structural equation modeling (SEM). This indicates that there were a variety of methodologies used in investigating family business issue.

What Do We Know from the Studies?

The topics coverage from the empirical studies in Table 3.3 shows that more than 70 % of the topics in the articles focused on six areas: social capital/social networking, family systems, resources and capabilities, succession, strategy, and governance. What were the findings from the studies in these topical areas? Table 3.4 presents the findings from the empirical studies. Most of the studies focusing on social capital and social networking endeavored to explain how they are related to performance outcomes such as financial performance, social performance, and business growth. Other outcome variables were family goals and top management team (TMT) congruence with respect to organizational culture, strategic vision, and strategic goals (Kelly et al., 2008), the establishment of entrepreneurial businesses (Khuval et al., 2009), and resource accumulation (quantity and cost of raising resources) (Khayesi et al., 2014). The findings from these studies indicate that family businesses rely on different external stakeholders to create relational social capital when compared with nonfamily businesses (Acquaah, 2011b). Moreover, social capital, whether relational (relationships with external stakeholders) or structural (e.g., network size), sometimes has both direct (Acquaah, 2012) and indirect (Khayesi et al., 2014) positive influence on family businesses’ performance. Social capital (founder centrality) could also have a negative influence on family businesses’ performance (Kelly et al., 2008). The studies further show that social capital plays an important role in resource accumulation (Khayesi et al., 2014) and the establishment of entrepreneurial businesses (Khuval et al., 2009), but it is detrimental to TMT congruence on culture, vision, and goals of the family business.

The articles on family systems leverage the unique sociocultural environment of Africa to study the activities of family businesses. One of the interesting studies in this area is that of Jithoo (1985). Jithoo (1985) shows that the extended family (or what he calls the “joint family”) is not a drag on the family business; rather, it is an efficient organization for capital accumulation and resource mobilization. The benefit of the extended family to the family business is even greater when Indian family businesses experienced challenges in competing for financial and other resources in the open market. Jithoo (1985, p. 374) concludes that “The joint family, then, is a utilitarian institution, which can provide capital which can be used to expand a business, to start a new venture, and to educate its members in order to improve their business acumen.” Findings from the other studies also show that family moral support is very important in developing resiliency in female entrepreneurial ventures (Welsh et al., 2013), and the collectivistic culture plays a critical role in the family business, as it provides the opportunity for “mutual dependence between kinship group and the products of collective labor and a competitor relationship with other members of the wider community” (Nicholson, 2005, pp. 265–266).

The role of resources and capabilities was also an important topical issue covered in the articles. The articles focused mainly on the mobilization and accumulation of resources and how these resources influence performance outcomes in family businesses. The findings suggest that the ability of family businesses to accumulate resources is influenced by structural social capital (Khayesi et al., 2014) and relational social capital (Herman, 2006). Moreover, family businesses rely on family members for their labor needs, and this is especially true for boys (Webbink et al., 2011); access to physical resources and information influences financial performance and growth of family businesses (Farrington et al., 2011), while capabilities in the form of firm-specific managerial experience (FSME) impact firm performance (Acquaah, 2012).

Family business succession was another important topic discussed in the studies. The succession studies focused on exploring the factors that enhanced satisfaction with the succession process, the importance of estate and retirement planning in family businesses, and the relationship between the succession process and authority. The findings show that satisfaction with the succession process in family businesses is influenced by factors such as the willingness of the successor to take over the family business, the owner-manager’s trust in the successor’s abilities and intentions to manage the business, the owner-manager’s interest outside the business, and the successor’s perception about harmonious relationships in the family (Venter et al., 2003, 2005). Moreover, there was lack of gender and firm size differences in the estate and retirement planning factors (van der Merwe, 2009b). Furthermore, a study by Osnes (2011), which investigated succession issues in four family businesses—a tribe, a family business hotel, land reform and lion-breeder, and a religious organization—demonstrates that power and authority play an important role in our understanding of succession dynamics in family businesses, while engendering the resetting or renewal of authority and power between different types of family- and nonfamily-based organizations. It should be noted that all the articles that investigated succession issues centered on South African family businesses.

Business strategy was influenced by manufacturing strategy in the form of delivery and flexibility (Acquaah et al., 2011) and management control systems (MCS; Acquaah, 2013), while it was found to impact the performance of family businesses. All the strategy-related articles studied family businesses in Ghana. In terms of governance in the family businesses, the focus was mostly on corporate governance issues. Khalif et al. (2016) found that board composition in Tunisian family-controlled businesses was determined by family complexity (generation transition) and family involvement (power and culture from the F-PEC scale by Klein, Astrachan, and Smyrnios (2005)). They also found that family businesses that appointed outside directors tended to begin from the third generation. Hearn (2011) examined the performance effects of family ownership and influence on board structure and its composition in businesses that have undergone an initial public offering (IPO) in the North African region (Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia) and found increased participation of family members at the board level. He further found that underpricing is lower in family businesses than in nonfamily businesses and that the wider dispersion of family ownership facilitates monitoring and surveillance, and mitigates underpricing. This finding seems to corroborate the conclusions from family business studies that subscribe to the view that family businesses experience lower agency costs (Anderson & Reeb, 2003). Hearn (2011, p. 150) concludes that “a desirable governance feature of family firms would be more dispersed ownership that would offer incentives for monitoring while a concentration of family at board level in terms of numbers acts as a device to facilitate the transmission of information.”

This brief review of the major topics discussed in the articles shows that there is lack of depth and breadth in almost all the topical areas, and therefore, it is difficult to conclusively ascertain the knowledge base of family business activities in Africa. Thus, there is the need to increase research on family businesses in Africa, and this research has to be differentiated from research on MSM businesses in Africa.

Discussion and Conclusion

As a field of study in business and the social sciences, family business may be considered to be young. According to Sharma, Melin, and Nordqvist (2014), the evolution of family business research in the business disciplines started in the 1950s. However, the research in family business did not receive traction until the “establishment of Family Business Review (FBR) in 1988—the first journal devoted solely to publishing research on family firms” (Sharma et al., 2014, p. 2). The state of the discipline in Africa is even younger, with the first research publication in the mid-1980s, and 89.6 % of the internationally recognized articles in family business published between 2000 and 2015. With family businesses dominating the economic landscape in Africa, contributions to knowledge of family business would be indispensable to the business and economic development and growth on the continent.

The purpose of this chapter is to review the research on family business in Africa, focusing on what has been done and what the studies tell us about the state of family businesses on the continent so that we can chart a course forward that would allow for the development of the field in Africa. The review provided mixed results in terms of family business research in Africa. The review shows that there was lack of depth and breadth in family business research topics that have been investigated in Africa. We found only 29 articles over a 30-year period focusing on family businesses in Africa; this research is a recent phenomenon, with almost 90 % of the studies conducted between 2000 and 2015. The quantity of the articles on family business in Africa is a tiny fraction of the production of knowledge on family businesses globally. We also found that only 14 broad topical areas in business were investigated by the articles and most of the studies emphasized only four topical areas—social capital and networks, family systems, resources and capabilities, and succession. The interesting thing about the topical areas covered in these studies is the lack of coverage of some areas that are critical to the management of family businesses such as human resources management, organizational behavior, leadership, accounting and financial management, and socioemotional wealth considerations. Although there was a reasonable coverage of succession issues in family businesses in the limited articles, they focused exclusively on South Africa. Therefore, management researchers interested in investigating family business issues in Africa should expand the topical areas of their research to cover areas that are lacking in the knowledge on family businesses that are being generated in the continent such as human resources management, leadership, innovation, and financial management issues. It is also imperative to study succession issues in other countries in Africa, as the survival rate of family businesses in Africa after the death of the family founder is very low.

Furthermore, more than 50 % of the articles did not define what they mean by family business, but the good news is that the other half that defined it highlighted the three fundamental characteristics of family businesses that differentiate them from nonfamily businesses, namely, family ownership, family involvement in management or business, and inter-generational transfer of ownership and/or management. We also found that the quality of most of the studies about family business in Africa is high, judging by the journals that published the studies, and there has been methodological rigor in the studies, as demonstrated by the statistical analysis used in both the qualitative and quantitative studies. This is contrary to the perception about the quality of general management research in and about Africa, which is considered to be of low quality (Ugwuegbu, 2001). From a theoretical perspective, only slightly more than 50 % of the articles relied on a theoretical foundation for their research, and most of those studies focused on a few theoretical perspectives such as social capital/network theory, RBV, and agency theory. It is interesting to note that there was lack of focus on important theoretical perspectives that have been used in family business research such as systems theory, stewardship theory, stakeholder theory, and socioemotional wealth perspective. However, the collectivistic sociocultural systems and the institutional environment in Africa precipitate the use of diverse theoretical perspectives in investigating the activities of family businesses. Although approximately 14 % of the topical area covered in the studies was family systems, none of those studies relied on the systems theory, which would probably be the logical perspective to use. Moreover, with family businesses trying to balance both financial and nonfinancial goals (Gomez-Mejia et al., 2011), it would be instructive to investigate the activities of family businesses using the stakeholder theory and socioemotional wealth perspective. We would, therefore, encourage researchers interested in family business issues in Africa to broaden their theoretical perspectives to include systems theory, stewardship theory, stakeholder theory, and socioemotional wealth perspective.

Our findings also showed that the research on family businesses in Africa from the articles we uncovered was skewed towards very few countries in Africa, with South Africa dominating the pack. The other countries with two or more studies were Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and Tunisia. Consequently, there is the need to undertake more family business studies in other African countries. Researchers should also conduct comparative studies of family businesses in multiple African countries or investigate phenomenon in family businesses in several African countries. This would allow us to enhance the knowledge base and provide us with a deeper and broader understanding of the activities of family businesses in Africa.

Conclusion

The assessment of the literature on family businesses in Africa has shown that despite the lack of sizeable research productivity and a meaningful knowledge base of family businesses, there has been improvements over the past five years. It is important for researchers to define what they mean by family businesses in their studies, as family businesses are not monolithic. There is also the need to expand the breadth of family business research to cover several countries on the African continent, while at the same time expanding the breadth and depth of the topics being investigated. The quality of family business research has increased over time with the use of diverse statistical methodologies. However, the theory used in examining the phenomenon in family businesses needs to be broadened to include other relevant ones that may be applicable to the African sociocultural and institutional environments. “Only through continuous theory development and testing can we find ourselves closer to the creation of usable knowledge” (Sharma, 2004, p. 27) on the activities of family businesses in Africa. Despite the fact that the study relied on a small number of studies, we hope that it would encourage research into family business activities in Africa.