Emotion research in family business remains relatively scarce and fragmented. To enhance the knowledge base of emotion research in family business, the current systematic literature review summarized the commonly studied contexts, theoretical framework development and emotion variables under different themes in the literature. Ninety-one peer-reviewed journal articles retrieved from high-quality journals from four different databases were coded and analyzed for emotion-related evidence. Results revealed the lack of research utilizing theoretical frameworks other than socioemotional wealth. The current review also identified the limited study context exploration and insufficient evidence on negative affect as well as antecedents and outcomes of both discrete emotions and affect valence. The current review contributes to the literature by improving the specificity of emotion research in family business and providing a comparison of emotions studied between family business literature and entrepreneurship literature. Future research can focus on specifying emotion-related research purposes, extending the investigation of emotion-related themes, and reexamining existing emotion-related constructs.
