ABSTRACT
In the Introduction to this work we showed how Family Entrepreneurship can be an integrating framework to bring together family, family business, and entrepreneurship research. This framework is the fruit of our understanding of Family Entrepreneurship and we share it in the hopes of encouraging dialogue and debate. It can first be used to build a more robust and holistic body of knowledge because it integrates extant research previously disconnected and second it can be used to provide an overarching framework to support future research. The scope of this framework induces bolder, rather than incremental, research questions. Recently, the question of whether Family Entrepreneurship could be considered as a field of research was asked (Bettinelli, Fayolle, & Randerson, 2014; Randerson, Fayolle, & Dossena, forthcoming). The preliminary answer was that
being or becoming a field of research depends strongly on the level of academic legitimacy. Legitimacy is a process of building, influenced by key drivers like salience of the issues studied, the production of strong results and the maintenance of disciplinary plasticity (Lyytinen & King, 2004).
