In many Western economies, a large proportion of all companies are classified as family businesses. At the same time, many of these family businesses are classified as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Both family businesses and SMEs have a number of specific characteristics, which often also bring with them certain challenges (e.g. close ties between ownership and management, resource constraints).
In this research focus, we address such special features and challenges of family businesses and SMEs. We deal with issues that concern the controlling and accounting of these companies, but also topics that go beyond these functions and concern more global management issues (e.g. automation, digitization, conflict management, resilience). We use quantitative and qualitative empirical and review methods.

Example publications from this research focus:

• Accountants and small businesses: toward a resource-based view
• Auditing in family firms: Past trends and future research directions
• Automation, Organizational Ambidexterity and the Stability of Employee Relations: New Tensions Arising Between Corporate Entrepreneurship, Innovation Management and Stakeholder Management
• Conflict Management Strategies and the Digitalization of Family Firms: The Moderating Role of Generational Ownership Dispersion
• Digitalization and entrepreneurial firms' resilience to pandemic crises: Evidence from COVID-19 and the German Mittelstand
• Family Influence and Management Accounting Usage - Findings from Germany and Austria
• Financial managers and organizational ambidexterity in the German Mittelstand: the moderating role of strategy involvement
• Management Accounting in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises: Current Knowledge and Avenues for Further Research
• Professionalization of management accounting in family firms: the impact of family members