This article identifies 25 articles that have been particularly influential in shaping the state of the art of research on family businesses. These works were identified based on a citation analysis of family business articles published over the past 6 years in the four journals that publish most of the research. The authors summarize those influential studies and discuss their most important contributions to scholars’ current understanding of family business. By identifying common themes among those studies, the authors are able to provide directions for future research in the field.

This paper examines the role played by internal control and its five components (i.e. control environment, risk assessment, control activities, information and communication, and monitoring) in alleviating future stock price crash risk. Using a unique dataset from China, we find evidence that internal control is negatively associated with future stock price crash risk. Specifically, control environment, information and communication, and monitoring are significantly and negatively associated with future stock price crash risk. Moreover, the negative association between internal control and crash risk is significantly more pronounced in firms with weak internal and external governance (i.e. audited by non-Big 4 auditors, located in provinces with low market development, and less conservative in accounting) and with poor ability to mitigate impacts of extreme negative events (i.e. non-state-owned enterprises). Our study highlights the delicate role of internal control as a mechanism in preventing crash of stock price.