The intersection of spirituality and succession in family firms: a systematic literature review and research agenda

Frame of Research. This paper conducts a systematic review of existing research on the role of spirituality and values in the succession process of family businesses. Objectives. The aim is to identify the potential interplay between spirituality and succession in family firms and uncover the main streams of research from which to build the future agenda. Methodology. This study adopts a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), retrieving 115 scholarly articles in the last 30 years from Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science and Google Scholar databases. Findings. Results show five main themes synthesizing the content of the sampled articles, from which it emerges that values coming from authentic spiritual adherence serve as a means of strategizing succession and as a subject of transmission. Finally, this study identifies a rich research agenda. Practical implications. Mapping the literature across family firms' spirituality and succession offers a novel perspective for family business owners and practitioners, shedding light on why family firms recognize or not spirituality at work, what it means by this spirituality, and how family firms make use of spirituality without instrumentalizing it. Limitations of the research. The main drawback is that the examined literature is not exhaustive because it is based only on two databases and focused exclusively on articles. Future research can consult other databases and combine them to obtain a more inclusive dataset. Originality. This paper provides the first systematic literature review on spirituality in family business studies while investigating how it intersects with the problematic issue of succession.