IFERA 2025 unfolded as an outstanding conference in the vibrant city of Zadar, Croatia. Hosted in an elegant resort by the sea, the conference fully embraced this year’s theme “Ownership, Purpose & Relationships”, offering a space where new ideas, collaborations, and friendships could start and flourish. The program was rich and diverse, featuring the Doctoral Consortium, PDWs, parallel sessions, and inspiring keynote speeches that encouraged participants to embrace fresh perspectives and let their research grow in new directions.
The Gala Dinner, hosted in a beautiful venue close to the sea, provided a fitting setting for the IFERA Award Ceremony. In this warm and celebratory atmosphere, six awards were presented with the thoughtful consideration of our juries. It was, yet again, an important moment to recognize excellence in the ongoing growth of our field. Below we give them another chance to shine:
The Best Conference Paper Award sponsored by CeFeo has been awarded to Marco Mismetti, Eliana Crosina, and Alfredo De Massis for their study entitled “Toward a model of role settling after family business succession”. The abstract is as follows:
Drawing from an 18-month ethnography of BuildCo – a family business that transferred ownership and leadership from first to second generation – we articulate the process that follows formal role transitions, role settling. Role settling explains how role entrants and incumbents infuse their roles with new meanings, broadening their previously taken-for-granted role boundaries. Understanding this process is important for family business continuity, and because the meanings that individuals ascribe to their roles guide their behaviors. Central to role settling were four phases: (1) identity auditing – the curated questioning of who I am, who we are as a family, and who we are as a collective; (2) expressing distinctiveness through artistic artifacts and activities; (3) manifesting care via extra-role behaviors; and (4) developing new role meanings by broadening previously taken-for-granted role boundaries. In explaining these phases, and articulating the connections between them, we make primary contributions to family business and organizations scholarship.
The Best Paper on Conference Theme prize sponsored by Innovation & Strategy has been awarded to Carlotta Benedetti, Christine Wowerath and Georg Mayer for their paper entitled “Purpose in family businesses: insights from purpose statement analysis”. The abstract is as follows:
Family firms are distinguished by the interplay between family and business systems, a dynamic that is evident in their corporate purpose as well as other organizational outcomes. With purpose increasingly recognized as a key strategic lever, this research addresses a gap in understanding how family businesses embed this duality within their purpose statements. Employing an inductive approach, the study integrates qualitative content analysis with quantitative cluster analysis to investigate purpose statements from 139 family-owned firms, uncovering three distinct purpose orientations: planetary guardians, human-centered advocates and sustainability seekers. This research contributes to existing literature by examining the heterogeneity of family firms in terms of how they conceptualize their reason for being and by introducing the concept of “purpose orientation”, which captures the influence of longevity and leadership on organizational values and strategic positioning.
The “WIFU Foundation” Best Paper Contribution to Practice featured three awards. The 3rd place went to Claudia Astrachan, Raphaëlle Mattart and Massimo Bau with the work entitled “Do we practice what we preach? Ambivalent effects of execution gaps in family constitutions”. The 2nd place has been awarded to Christina Hoon and Alina Baluch for their paper entitled “Actually I never wanted to do this": How do reluctant family CEOs construct a salient successor identity?”. And the first prize went to Rosalie Schwörer, Janina Klein, Elco van Burg and Joerg Bueechl with their paper “The role of emotional attachment in family firm succession”. The abstract is as follows:
Succession is a challenging phase in the lifecycle of family firms. Emotional attachment significantly influences this process, impacting both the motivation of senior and junior family members and the overall success of succession efforts. Despite its importance, research specifically examining the role of emotional attachment in succession remains limited. This study addresses this gap through a qualitative study of four German family firms. By applying attachment theory, we explore how different emotional attachments, the senior-junior relationship, and externals’ involvement shape the succession process. Our findings encapsulated in a qualitative model demonstrate the complex interplay of these influencing factors, providing a nuanced understanding of emotional attachment’s role in family firm succession. This research not only provides novel theoretical insights into family firm succession but also offers important insights for practitioners.
The “CYFE” Best Entrepreneurship in Family Business Paper was awarded to Marie Klein for her paper entitled “The spare siblings: Unveiling the emotional challenges of exclusion from family firm succession”. The abstract says:
This paper explores how ‘non-successors’ in family firms perceive the impact of being excluded from pursuing entrepreneurial careers within the family business and from this specific aspect of family life. Grounded in Social Identity Theory, the study offers insights into how the removal of the family business affects personal identity. Using a qualitative case study approach with 34 interviews across 28 private family firms, the findings highlight the emotional toll of exclusion from succession and its effects on identity. The research identifies three phases in the identity transition process: loss of identity, identity crisis, and identity reorientation. Nonsuccessors experience ambivalence, feeling both relief from escaping the business’s burdens and sadness from being excluded. They contend with a sense of freedom yet feel overshadowed by siblings who inherit the responsibility and prestige of steering the family firm forward. This study addresses a critical gap in family business research.
The IFERA Best PhD Research Proposal Award sponsored by Generation6 has been awarded to Maria Rosaria Marguglio with the work entitled “The role of entrepreneurial legacy in driving artificial intelligence adoption in family firms”. The abstract is as follows:
This dissertation examines the role of family ownership and entrepreneurial legacy in the firm’s adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Drawing on the distinctive characteristics of family-owned firms, such as the desire to maintain control over the business and the apprehension toward disruptive technologies, we hypothesize that family ownership is negatively related to the adoption of AI. Indeed AI, often referred to as “black box system”, poses significant concerns regarding control and accountability. Further, the study proposes that a firm’s entrepreneurial legacy moderates this negative relationship, fostering the adoption of AI. To test our hypotheses, we plan to conduct a survey involving a sample of Italian family firms.
All of this would not have been possible without the effort, time, and dedication of all IFERA reviewers. An outstanding recognition goes to the IFERA Best Reviewers Award to Attila Wieszt, Julia Suess-Reyes and Sofia Brunelli for their insightful and constructive reviews.
This year once again, the Award Ceremony became an inspiring celebration of the remarkable achievements being made in family business scholarship. The energy on the stage, fueled by the audience’s excitement, reflected the strength of a truly connected and supportive network. Scholars and practitioners from different organizations came together with genuine enthusiasm, sharing the determination to advance the family business field.
Our warmest congratulations go to the awarded winners and heartfelt gratitude to the community that celebrates them.
