Small Business Institute

Member Research Profile

 “SBI Members Perfecting the Art of Research Project Expansion and Publications Growth”
 

Long-time SBI members and Fellows Bob Lussier and Matt Sonfield are experts in building upon earlier research projects.  Starting in 2004 with a single study of generational differences in 149 American family businesses, these two highly successful co-authors presented this research at the Eastern SBI and National SBI conferences and it was published in the Family Business Review. They have expanded their family business data base to almost 1000 family firms world-wide, with empirical research studies focusing on a wide variety of characteristics and variables important in family business, such as family-member-managers versus non-family-member-managers, “micro” versus “small” firms, gender issues in family firm management, founder influence, succession planning, business size, etc.  These studies have resulted to date in 17 academic journal articles and 69 papers published in academic conference Proceedings, with the multinational data base continuing to grow, and thus additional studies and manuscripts in the pipeline. 

How did they do it? When presenting papers and networking at conferences, they invite people to collect data for them in other countries and become co-authors with them. Matt also sent emails to all the foreign authors in the Family Business Review over the past few years inviting them to collect data and become co-authors.  

In addition, during this time period, both authors have continued to publish a variety of other journal articles and conference papers, on their own or with other co-authors. When Bob is contacted by people from around the globe regarding his success vs. failure prediction model, published first in the Journal of Small Business Management and later in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, and others), he invites them to co-authorship.

Bob has conducted publish don’t perish workshop at SBI and other conferences. For more tips on publishing see R.N. Lussier “Publish Don’t Perish: 100 Tips to Improve Your Ability to get Published,” (Information Age Publishing, 2010).

Robert N. Lussier is Professor of Management at Springfield College (MA).  He is the author of more than 380 publications, including articles published in the Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Family Business Review, Journal of Management Education, Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, Journal of Small Business Management, Journal of Small Business Strategy, SBI Journal and several others. He has also published 10 textbooks in Management, Leadership, Small Business, and Entrepreneurship (South-Western/Cengage), Human Relations (Irwin/McGraw-Hill). Human Resource Management (Sage), Business, Society and Government, and Research Methods and Statistics (Waveland).

Matthew C. Sonfield is the Robert F. Dall Distinguished Professor in Business at Hofstra University (NY). He has published over 300 articles and books, in the fields of entrepreneurship, small business, family business, minority business and automotive business history.  His articles have been published in journals such as the Harvard Business Review, Family Business Review, Journal of Small Business Management, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Business Horizons, Mid-American Journal of Business, Journal of Small Business Strategy, SBI Journal, Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development  and many others.