With the rise of the so-called emerging economies in the early twenty-first century there is a renewed interest in organizational forms that differ from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) “norm” long studied by management literature and business historians. Among them, family firms have caught the attention of scholars trying to understand their dominance and persistence over time in the emerging world. A common interpretation derived from neo-institutional theory widely accepted by management scholars posits that the existence and power of family firms in non-OECD countries responds to “institutional voids” that do not allow market forces to efficiently allocate resources in the economy forcing economic actors to find other means through “nonmarket strategies” and related organizational forms. Understandably, historians read this interpretation with skepticism for several reasons. First, some organizational forms commonly related to the emerging world such as business groups or powerful family firms have long been present in the OECD world. Second, all markets (developed, emerging, and underdeveloped) require the main economic actors to strategize through a combination of price mechanisms and nonmarket strategies, such as personal relations. And, third, given that most of the world's population does not live in the OECD countries, the way they interact in the economic sphere cannot be classified as simple “voids” or “anomalies,” but rather as a norm for most of humanity. This is why Evolution of Family Business is particularly welcome. This comprehensive work provides a state-of-the-art analysis written by renowned scholars studying family firms in Spain and Latin America. The editors Andrea Lluch, who teaches at Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia) with a research affiliation at Argentina's CONICET, and Paloma Fernández Pérez, who teaches at the University of Barcelona (Spain), who have already made major contributions to Latin American and Spanish business history did an impressive job at keeping internal coherence between all essays, something often missed in edited collections.

The editors and contributors of Evolution of Family Business engaged in the enormous challenge of going beyond the institutional voids and varieties of capitalism literatures to understand the dominance and persistence of family firms in Spain and Latin America. One challenge frequently present in edited collections on Ibero-America (as Latin America plus Spain plus Portugal are referred to) is to show the great diversity existing between these nations (and as this volume shows, within those nations) in terms of economic and social development as well as political historical processes. Because these countries are usually lumped together due to a common language and geographic proximity, scholars are often tempted to generalize trends and superficially homogenize characteristics of this region. All these complications are addressed both in the introductory and concluding essays by Lluch and Fernández Pérez as well as in the individual essays.

Three main themes link most chapters together: the heavy weight of the natural resource export sector in these economies, the state-led industrialization efforts, and the importance of the state (often linked to the family firms by family ties). The book shows how some important families rose around the export sector, but could not adapt to the change the adoption of an industrial protectionist model created as happened with some agriculture-oriented families in Costa Rica in the 1940s (chapter 8 by Juan Carlos Leiva and Erick Guillén Miranda). In a country like Honduras, strongly dominated by one single export (bananas) in the hands of foreign firms, what became the major family businesses were originally created by immigrants working in the service sector (chapter 9 by Allan Discua Cruz, Concepción Ramos Rodas, Claudia Raudales, and Lourdes Fortín). Immigrants also created early family firms in the industrial sector of a country oriented toward exports of natural resources to foreign markets, as was the case of Peru in the first half of the twentieth century (chapter 11 by Martín Monsalve Zanatti). In other cases, some big family firms emerged around natural resource exports, but later adapted to the industrial sector as was the case of several of the main Argentine family-owned firms (chapter 6 by Lluch and María Inés Barbero). Their adaptation strategy was to organize themselves around diversified business groups, which gave them flexibility at operating in different sectors of the economy. As Monsalve Zanatti shows, the creation of diversified business groups was a strategy followed by the Peruvian families in the 1960s as a way to protect themselves against economic and political uncertainties. Other family businesses emerged around industrial protectionism, but showed capabilities to adapt to an open economy in the 1990s by developing strategies such as opening production facilities abroad as was the case for Gerdaus and Oderbrecht in Brazil (chapter 5 by Armando Dalla Costa, Carlos Eduardo Drumond, and José María Las Heras) or the Zambranos of Mexico's CEMEX (chapter 4 by Mario Cerutti). Other families adapted to the internationalization of their economy by expanding globally the operations of their business groups in areas such as retail and finance as happened in Chile (chapter 12 by Jon Martínez Echezárraga).

The diversification of operations of the family business can also include the political sphere. In Colombia most major business families also entered politics (which included having relatives elected as the country's president) to increase their competitive advantage (chapter 7 by Carlos Dávila). Regional preferences by a particular regime (as happened during Francisco Franco's dictatorship in Spain) led to the rise of some families and the fall of others depending on their geographical origin. The end of the dictatorship permitted the reemergence of family businesses from areas neglected by Franco such as Catalonia (chapter 10 by Fernández Pérez and Pablo Díaz Morlán). The importance of close relations with the state makes the comparative study by Javier Vidal Olivares particularly useful for other scholars (chapter 2). Nuria Puig opens a new research agenda by studying the largely neglected philanthropic sector in Latin America and Spain (chapter 3). The chapters on Argentina, Peru, Mexico, and Colombia can be particularly useful as models for further research. The Spanish edition of this book won the 2016 Instituto Argentino de la Empresa Familiar Research Award (Argentina).