Essays in Family Business

Abstract

Family businesses are important contributors to capitalist economies yet transferring the business from one generation to the next continues to have a high failure rate. The literature consistently shows that the owning family is a significant contributing factor that shapes succession and other organizational outcomes. Previous research studying the business family has focused on the firm to infer the family's influence, falling short of apprehending how the family shapes the family business. To address this gap, the three essays in this dissertation use a family-first approach to better understand how families differ in the ways they view, interpret, and make sense of their family business. The focus of the project is to critically examine how individual family members attribute meaning to the family business and how business families interactions create shared meaning that influence how they shape the family business. I begin with a critical review paper that used symbolic interactionism and sensemaking-sensegiving to show that authority, culture, and discourse are social processes that influence the meaning of the family business and family members' behaviour in the family business. Next, I examined how families made sense of change triggers when managing their family enterprise culture. Finally, I examined interdisciplinary literature to explore how mental health conditions of family leaders can act as a trigger of change that impacts the family and the family business. To conclude, these three essays offer hindsight, insight, and foresight into how capturing how business family members create shared meaning can enrich our understanding of differences across family businesses.