Two-thirds of the world’s private companies are family owned. It is an organizational
model that, despite the arrival of large corporations, remains and is still totally in place. The survival
of these organizations is not easy, and is conditioned by multiple factors. The research that addresses
the sustainability of family businesses is numerous and has been conducted from multiple disciplines.
This document investigates the trends in scientific production related to family businesses and their
sustainability, using bibliometric techniques and SciMAT software. Atotal of 286 articles were analysed
between 2003 and 2019 from the journals indexed in theWeb of Science (WoS). The results suggest
that, although there is a growing interest in the study of the sustainability of family businesses, there is
instability in the centrality of the topics, which denotes the existence of a wide margin of development.
The most influential and trend-setting themes emerge mainly concentrated in three lines: those that
analyse factors that drive sustainability, such as socio-emotional wealth and stakeholders; those interested
in knowing about methods or practices that favour sustainability, such as CSR, performance, management
or innovation; and those that investigate factors that endanger survival, mainly intergenerational
succession processes. The contribution of this work is that, through bibliometric techniques, it sheds
light on the groups of topics that condition the sustainability of family businesses, which will help
the scientific community in the orientation of future work in this field of research
