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The global pandemic has had a considerable effect on organisations’ performance and development and on the daily lives of the general population. This study aims to analyse the recent literature on the topics of Covid-19 and sustainability and proposes to rethink and redefine sustainability with the intersection of human health as a fourth sustainable pillar.

Using the Scopus and ISI Web of Science databases, 119 articles were analysed in detail and classified according to concepts and principles for achieving sustainable development, based on the Brundtland Report, 1987.

The results indicate a high number of publications in the social dimension, with a relevant proportion of studies in the health sector. This study allows us to conclude that all sectors of society are being affected by the pandemic. However, the enormous tension and the immediate impact felt by the health sector during the pandemic reflect directly on the population, and there are clear signs that in the medium and long term, instability and uncertainty in the environmental, economic and social dimensions will remain. In national health systems, monitoring, innovating in human resource management and investing in information technology can ensure organizations’ reliability and sustainability. The conclusion involves the suggestion of introducing health as a new pillar for sustainability to consolidate the basis and structure of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Objectives. The use of fundamental concepts is necessary and must be aligned to reassess the results obtained in studies, in comparison with observational data.

The implications arising from the inclusion of health as a fourth pillar of sustainability are diverse. The need to build a new theoretical and conceptual framework for sustainability derives from the fact that health reflects the concern of many postulants in this field of practices. The determining or conditioning conditions of the observed effects of the pandemic by COVID-19, whether situated simply as factors and/or economic, environmental or social reflexes that precede them, requires a conceptual development that allows its approach, as a complex object, whose determinations are subject to variable degrees of uncertainty and diversity.

This study aims to redefine the concept of sustainability, considering that health has become a public health emergency of international interest. Health affects the supply chain, cash flow, interferes with the educational format and interrupts the workforce’s routine, among other aspects, showing the true nature of its importance and its impact in all spheres (economic, environmental and social).

Adopting the research concept of socioemotional wealth (SEW) as applied to family firm leaders, this study aims to analyse the literature on succession and corporate governance processes in family firms in keeping with this still developing concept and thereby not only contributing to advancing knowledge on this field but also proposing a conceptual model of analysis and a future research agenda.

The authors carried out a review and systematisation of the literature according to its different thematic groups through recourse to VOSviewer software and content analysis to establish a systematised and integrated structure of the reference literature based on a sample of 218 studies published and indexed on the Web of Science and SCOPUS databases between 2010 and 2021.

The results portray five leading clusters, specifically, (1) SEW and family firm performance; (2) SEW and the focus on leadership as a precursor to succession; (3) family firms, SEW and corporate social governance; (4) family firm innovation and performance; and (5) family ownership and management. The authors then put forward a conceptual model of analysis both to better integrate these topics and as a proposition for application in future research projects.

The study provides a new and solid systematisation of the literature and supports the argument that family firms concentrating on developing the leader's SEW increase the probability of structuring a successful succession process as well as the likelihood of achieving higher quality corporate governance.