External affairs and trusted family businesses: A research agenda

• Published date: 01 May 2023
• Author: Jennifer J. Griffin,Yoo Na Youm
• Date: 01 May 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2853

RESEARCH ARTICLE

External affairs and trusted family businesses: A research

agenda

Jennifer J. Griffin | Yoo Na Youm

Loyola University Chicago, Quinlan School of

Business, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Correspondence

Jennifer J. Griffin, Loyola University Chicago,

Quinlan School of Business, Chicago, IL, USA.

Email: jgriffin5@luc.edu

In the past two decades, the Journal of Public Affairs has solidified corporate public

affairs as a legitimate leadership skillset vital to driving future business growth. Yet,

more work at a persistently overlooked gap in the Journal, the intersection of public

affairs and family businesses, might shed new light on thriving, trusted, and sustain-

able business practices. This paper examines the unique contributions of family busi-

nesses as trusted influencers. As one of the most prominent forms of business,

worldwide, family businesses persistently enjoy unusually high levels of public trust

while collectively employing millions of wage earners yet their contributions to

corporate external affairs research ostensibly have been largely overlooked. These

“silent”community and social influencers offer a potentially new perspective on

effective public outreach given their persistent and unique trust advantage. Fam-

ily business' trust-based capabilities can potentially bring new insights to under-

standing effective stakeholder engagement, credible communications, and issues

management—the sweet spot of corporate public affairs functions. Future

research opportunities based on relational- and locational- advantages of trusted

family businesses are identified.

KEYWORDS

business families, corporate social responsibility, family firms, trust

1|INTRODUCTION

An online search of the Journal of Public Affairs (JPA) library reveals

Conor McGrath's (2006) case study as the earliest article using the

term “family”in the title. He examined the uniquely effective lobbying

strategies of long-lived, family businesses that drew upon their storied

legacy to build public trust. More specifically, McGrath (2006) exam-

ined how family businesses transformed the U.S. beer distribution

industry by effectively deploying the slogan “Family Businesses

Distributing America's Beverage.”

Since McGrath's (2006) article from nearly 20 years ago, surpris-

ingly, there has been only one additional article published in the

Journal of Public Affairs on the importance of family businesses, the

impacts of families' desire to leave a legacy, or family's unique contri-

butions directly affecting business decisions, mitigating harms, or the

betterment of society through corporate public affairs. Harris and

Ozdemir (2020) examined the influence of family owners and public

outreach activities in the context of Turkish family businesses.

Focusing on the family aspect of family business and public

affairs, a broader search within the JPA library hints at the indirect

importance of families as a critical influencer in forming children's

political opinions (Mortimore & Tyrrell, 2006); an important institution

that must be considered when examining political outcomes in Latin

America (Thomas & Klimovich, 2014); an important actor as

Received: 23 December 2021 Accepted: 9 January 2023

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2853

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Public Affairs published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

J Public Affairs. 2023;23:e2853. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of11

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2853