•The acceleration of globalization has put forward new requirements on corporate strategy.•This paper highlights the innovative measures of the family business in the context of globalization and identifies the frontiers in this field.•The impact of globalization on family business continues to be a critical issue of research.•According to multiple methods, such as the descriptive analysis, the bibliographic coupling analysis, the co-citation analysis, and the co-occurrence analysis, the evolution, characteristics, and hot topics of family business are summarized.•From the analysis results, family businesses have been actively seeking change to adapt to the new stage of globalization. Accelerated globalization has created new requirements for corporate strategies. Understanding the statistical relationship between economic globalization and family business development is important in advancing the theory and practice in this field. This study aims to explore economic changes and their influence on the family businesses when globalization thrives. To achieve this, we utilize a bibliometric analysis with visualization tools: VOSviewer and R Bibliometrix. The relevant literature from 1900 to 2021 is collected using retrieval formulas from the Web of Science Core Collection. First, this study analyzes the literature from multiple aspects, including authors, citations, journals, keywords, and countries, to define the features of the publications. Then, bibliographic coupling, co-citation, and co-occurrence analyses are conducted. The results show the evolution of the literature related to family businesses with globalization. Furthermore, the current challenges and popular issues are discussed for future research. This paper highlights the innovative measures of family businesses in the context of globalization and identifies the frontiers in this field.