The Role and Contribution of Higher Education in Family Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Driven by increasing awareness of the importance of family firms in most countries, the interest in family business studies is growing at a rapid pace. The entrepreneurial potential of family-owned businesses has been gaining even more attention among scholars and institutions since the 1980s and 90s. This fact joined to the fact that family firms are the most extended type of businesses all around the world has pushed a growing number of higher education institutions to introduce family business education programs in their curricula. Family business education at prominent universities provides high-level support for family SMEs due to such complexities of a family and their needs to the dynamics of a competitive business which can be quite challenging. It is therefore attractive to investigate and compare what characterizes the family business education programs in USA and Spain, including an overview of the most recent offerings among the most prominent higher education institutions.