Sex and gender in family business succession research: A review and forward agenda from a social construction perspective

This article focuses on how family business succession research has engaged and may be further enriched by application of a gender lens as socially constructed. We analyze the succession literature developing a gender terms vocabulary and five themes of historical engagement. Finding a lack of theoretical grounding, we apply the construct of gender, through expectation states theory, revising the Sharma and Irving model of successor commitment to examine how a socially constructed view of gender shifts and opens up points of view. We then present a forward looking agenda to motivate future scholarship.