Family firms have long been a prominent feature of the organizational landscape and researchers have found some variations of this organizational form to be more resilient than others. The articles and commentaries in this special issue address some of the bases of this resilience including arranged marriages as a management succession strategy, long‐term orientation and multitemporal perspectives, knowledge structures and opportunity identification, and social capital and social exchange. This introduction to the eighth special issue on “theories of family enterprise” discusses the contributions made by the articles and commentaries to our understanding about the resilience of family firms.