Enterprise and Small Business Principles

Interpretive inquiry of family and enterprise

As outlined in the preceding sections, the study of family and enterprise has roots in a range of disciplines from psychology and social anthropology to economic history. The study of the relationship between family and business is receiving widespread attention from a variety of audiences including academia, consultancy and policy sup­port agencies. Family businesses represent a significant empirical phenomenon and the informal relationship between enterprise and family means that the ‘field’ is flourish­ing and growing in theoretical and methodological diversity. Having said this, how­ever, there is a particular emphasis within the study of family and enterprise that is worthy of more widespread application: this relates to the application of interpretive lines of inquiry.

Interpretive inquiry has five key characteristics (Fletcher, 2005). First, there is a con­cern for ‘interpretive awareness’ and thinking or feeling oneself into the situation of the research subject through intuition and empathy (Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2000). Second, it aims to focus on the sharing, negotiation and interpretation of meanings that are, for example, associated with the notion of family. The researcher would, then, be concerned with the interpretation of peoples’ interpretive processes. Third, inter­pretive inquiry takes account of processes - processes that are historically, culturally and politically situated. This means considering the social embeddedness of family/ enterprise activity in particular social/cultural/political contexts. Fourth, interpretive inquiry assumes that meaning creation is constructed inter-subjectively through exchange and interaction. Attention is drawn, therefore, to how meaning making, knowledge and understanding are constructed between people in the process of relating (Gergen,

1999) . Fifth, language and discourse lies at the centre of interpretive inquiry because it is through talk, conversation and dialogue that meaning is constructed.

Interpretive inquiry is not particularly novel in the study of family and enterprise. Ram found in his studies of ethnic minority firms (1991, 1994a) that meanings of family were interpreted and negotiated within the firm (see Chapter 10 for further dis­cussions of this issue). Central to the negotiation of racial constraints, for example, was the role of family. He comments that whilst, internally, family relationships were a flexible source of labour and means of imposing managerial discipline, externally family roles were important for overcoming racial obstacles in the market (1994b: 51). Fletcher (1997) discusses how interpretations of family were ‘drawn upon’ to block the strategic development of the small business in her ethnographic study. Also, McCollom (1992) discusses the role of ‘organisational’ stories in the family-owned business. She reveals how family and non-family employees experience membership in a family enterprise. Through the use of organisational stories, she is concerned with how people become aware of the relationship between the ‘family’ and ‘business’ in their daily work lives and how this relationship shapes organisational structures and processes. Hamilton (2002) also utilises story-like narrative accounts to draw attention to the

political and gendered nature of leadership in family businesses. Likewise, Ainsworth and Cox (2003) adopt an interpretive style of analysis to examine the symbolic, material and ideological significance of the family in creating divisions and disunity in small organisations.

What is significant about interpretive lines of inquiry is that explicit attention is drawn to how the concept of ‘family’ is interpreted and constructed by those working in family-enterprise situations. From this perspective, the notion of family (and enter­prise) is approached as something that is multi-dimensional and interpretively dynamic. Consideration could be given to family discourses in order to identify how such dis­courses help us to assign meaning to the ‘actions we take on behalf of the social ties designated as familial’ (Gubrium and Holstein, 1990: 14). This is because family dis­courses provide a means of talking about, assigning meaning to, and making sense of relations with others and this understanding also provides courses of action (as seen in the studies cited above). Or, the notion of ‘family’ could be seen as a ‘realised category’ in which understandings and interpretations of ‘family’ (and enterprise) are socially constructed and help to make sense of the reality that they describe (Bourdieu, 1996: 21). Also, the ‘familial analogy’ could be used to explain the attachments, inter-personal linkages, emotional bondings and affectionate ties that develop between and among its members - acting like ‘glue’, holding firms together (Kepner, 1983: 60) and account­ing for why people working in small firms often refer to themselves as ‘one big happy family’ (Holliday and Letherby, 1993). It also signifies that ‘family’ culture is not simply a product of employing family members and that feelings of ‘family’ can be cultivated without blood ties (Ram and Holliday, 1993b: 165).

Finally, interpretive inquiry is important for examining the link between family and enterprise because it provides for a close and detailed understanding of the rela - tionality between people’s whole lives, family lives, their biography and orientations to enterprise or work. For example, through interpretive analysis the processes that con­nect and interrelate people - their lives and work activities - into enterprise/organisa­tional structures, whether this be self-employment situations with loose links to family resources, or wife-husband teams, sibling partnerships, second generation or large family ‘cousin consortiums’, can be explored. Attention can be drawn to the ways in which this relationality is played out in everyday human or financial managerial prac­tices and in strategic decision-making processes about growth, succession or ‘passing the baton’. Also, the ways in which family-enterprise relationality helps to shape (or inhibit) business development, longevity and performance can be made more explicit. Herein lie possibilities for exploring more closely the specific transactions linking the institutions of ‘economy’ and ‘family’ as ‘“connected organisers” of experience and systems of social relations’ (Kanter, 1979). Further, It is hoped that researchers utilise interpretive ideas to bring these understandings more fully to the surface in research accounts.

In addition to the topics reviewed in this chapter, further topics that would benefit from interpretive analysis are: agency theory discussions; ethics and family firms; women in family firms; gender issues and the link to enterprise; perceptions of venture capital; exit strategies; cross-cultural and comparative studies of family businesses; strategic management and planning practices; conflict and the family business; and internationalisation strategies.

11.8 Chapter summary

This chapter has reviewed the different approaches that have been utilised to examine the link between family and enterprise. The chapter started by exploring some defini­tional issues regarding family and enterprise, prior to evaluating the relationship between family and enterprise using rationalist and ‘systems’ approaches. The chapter has made an explicit attempt to criticise the effects of rationalist thinking on studies of family businesses that have tended to create duality and polarity in our understanding of the family-enterprise relationship. It was argued that a developmental and integrated view of family and enterprise is more useful for understanding the specific transactions linking the institutions of ‘economy’ and ‘family’. Next, a range of approaches and theories used to examine the integration of family and enterprise/business activities were described. Finally, the chapter concluded with a discussion of interpretive inquiry and its potential benefits and uses in explaining how family and enterprise issues ‘come together’ in small business creation and development.