Trends in family business research.

This study describes the structure and trends of the family business literature. We analyze the content of the papers focused on family firms published in any journal of the categories 'business', 'business finance', 'economics' and 'management' of the Social Science Citation Index during the 1961-2008 period. Bibliometric methods are used to describe the evolution of publication activity, the most representative contributors, the methodologies applied, and the content of the articles in order to explore the main themes researched. These analyses enable the identification of potential avenues for future research that could be meaningful to advance in the consolidation of the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]