A Historical Perspective of North African, Levantine, and Gulf Family Businesses in the 20th Centur

This chapter demonstrates the lack of history-informed research on the topic and calls for increasing academic attention to MENA family businesses. It argues that history-informed research is vital to understanding these businesses from both macro and micro perspectives, given their embeddedness in the region's unique historical, cultural, and institutional contexts. Based on empirical data collected from family businesses in the Gulf region, the Levant, and North Africa, the chapter demonstrates how, around the Gulf, family businesses’ size, structure, and heavy involvement in critical sectors must be viewed against the backdrop of historical relationships with ruling powers, which continue to cast them in central nation-building roles.