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The purpose of this paper is to find throughout history examples of wealth management of a family or business families that can be assimilated into the current concept of family offices (FOs). In such examples, the study identifies characteristics associated with the different dimensions of the concept of socioemotional wealth (SEW).

Drawing on the socioemotional perspective, this paper relates significant examples of FOs based on historical stages (ancient history, the middle ages, modern history, the contemporary period and the actual world). Each case is discussed with an effort to identify the dimensions of the SEW that fit and help in understanding the organization studied.

Mainly, FOs allow the management of the family legacy, philanthropy, promotion of entrepreneurship and family wealth preservation for future generations. Autonomy in decision-making, privacy and confidentiality and the achievement of more intangible goals make the FO preferable to other institutions. Through the study of historical cases, the FO constitutes a structure with objectives and activities that have remained consistent from Rome to the present, regardless of historical, political or social context. The results also identify four out of five FIBER dimensions of SEW.

In addition to contributing to the scarce literature on FOs, this paper uses various examples of historical periods to better understand its origin, evolution and current state. A selection of examples at different times allows us to verify that FOs undergo a series of changes throughout history but maintain their characteristics regardless of the historical context. This paper is the first to explore the origin and development of the FO as organization. Building on the findings, the authors present a conceptual SEW framework to deepen in the knowledge of FO. This framework could help researchers and practitioners in future researches providing a conceptual link that demonstrates the components of the SEW perspective best fit the objectives pursued by business families when establishing a family office.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze if choices made by family businesses (FBs) regarding job stability in economic recessions are different, on average, to those made by nonfamily firms. Moreover, the study tries to elucidate if this potential difference depends on the family generation that is in charge. The analysis relies upon a sample of 55,091 Spanish firms, as Spain is one of the countries that suffered the greatest impact of the 2008 Great Recession.

To test the hypotheses, the authors built a database of 55,091 Spanish firms, 45,351 family firms and 9,740 nonfamily firms, for the period 2007–2015. Based on the socioemotional wealth (SEW) approach, this article sheds light on the question of whether family identification, binding social ties and long-term vision lead FB to behave differently from nonfamily businesses in human resource management.

In times of crisis, FBs do maintain jobs to a higher extent than nonfamily businesses, and this effect is especially intense when the first generation is in charge. According to the SEW approach, the emotional links between ownership and management make the firm more prudent when hiring during good times and when firing in times of crisis. This makes employment in FBs more stable than in private ones. This result has two positive effects. Higher job stability is an additional contribution of family firms to social welfare and happiness. Furthermore, a larger share of family firms involves stronger automatic macrostabilizers to deal with the business cycle, supplementing fiscal macrostabilizers, such as personal income tax (PIT) or unemployment insurance.

Family firms maintained employment more than nonfamily firms did during the crisis. The emotional links between ownership and management and the long-term vision make the firm more prudent when hiring during good times and when firing in times of crisis. These features could make family firms more cautious in terms of hiring and firing and thus enable them to offer their employees implicit employment protection and stability. This positive effect decreases as firm age advances, due to the minor linkage between ownership and employees, in spite of maintaining identification and long-term vision.

From a policy perspective, greater job stability is an additional contribution of family firms to social welfare and happiness. Hence, a larger share of family firms would involve stronger automatic macrostabilizers to deal with the business cycle, supplementing well-known fiscal macrostabilizers such as the PIT or unemployment insurance. The idea of family firms as countercyclical agents linking the micro dimension with the macro dimension becomes more interesting in the present context with the crisis generated by COVID-19.

In addition to contributing to the scarce literature on FB and employment in times of crisis, this paper also considers the generational effect on employment in the economic crisis context from the SEW approach. In addition, sound econometric methodology applied using an extremely large database grounded the results. In contrast with studies in the FB field that have typically focused on large listed firms (Mazzi, 2011), the study relies upon a database of privately held companies, which are more representative of FBs in civil law countries, such as Spain. The Spanish case is particularly interesting because it was one of the OECD countries shocked by the Great Recession. Finally, the authors propose family firms as countercyclical agents linking the micro dimension to the macro dimension.

Analyzing the main determinants that lead a traveler to make a cultural trip is an important issue to understand where the cultural tourism market is going, and where the decision-makers should intervene. This study helps develop a profile of cultural tourism participants, and underscore the changes in this market niche. This information is crucial for the successful marketing and development of cultural tourism in the future.

The authors estimate a binary probabilistic (logit) model to determine the probability of a tourist to travel for cultural reasons, as a function of the traveler's socio-economic characteristic (e.g. age, gender, income or level of studies), of the trip-related characteristics (e.g. distance traveled to destination or mode of transport) and of the characteristics of the province of destination (e.g. weather conditions or existence of cultural sites at destination).

This study’s estimates reveal that middle-aged individuals, with a higher level of studies and with a medium level of income show a higher propensity to travel for cultural reasons. The latter finding evidences that cultural tourism has evolved from a niche market reserved for an elite clientele to a much wider range of people. Additionally, cultural travelers tend to travel statistically much longer distances. They are less prone to visit crowded destinations, prefer visiting destinations with important cultural sites, and are less sensitive to weather conditions. Finally, the authors discover a complementary effect of culture tourism and other activities carried out during the trip such as visiting cities or theme parks; and a substitution effect with “beach-and-sun” tourism.

The information given in this study can be crucial for the successful marketing and development of cultural tourism in the future. A better understanding of the main determinants of being a cultural traveler implies a better and a more efficient implementation of managerial and political measures to attract a kind of tourism characterized by a high spending capacity.

Discovering the main determinants of being a cultural traveler is a topic scarcely treated in the literature. This study has the main originality to include characteristics of the destination (pull factors) to explain the individual's decision to take a cultural trip. Moreover, the authors work at a provincial (NUTS-3) level of analysis, which makes this study original in the field of cultural tourism.

This study aims to map the development of research on family business in tourism and hospitality and provides insights into the key contributors, key areas and current dynamics, and suggests future research directions in the field.

This study uses the Web of Science (WoS) database to identify the 124 articles published in the theme. The study uses bibliometric indicators such as the co-citation network, word co-occurrence network to analyze the publication and citation structure using Science of Science (Sci2), OpenRefine, and Gephi.

The top authors, top journals and major themes are recognized using bibliometric techniques. The study identifies six keyword clusters: entrepreneurship, innovation, and empirical collaborating with tourism, hospitality, and family business. The country-wise collaboration indicates the lack of research in the eastern hemisphere of the world. The co-authorship shows studies shared among individuals of a few organizations. The trends from bibliographic coupling depict the evolution of research.

The scope of data collection for the network analysis is limited to the WoS. Incorporating papers from other databases might provide different network structures and insights.

The study is the first of its kind in the theme of family businesses in tourism and hospitality and will contribute to the literature by identifying future research directions.