Raphaëlle MATTART, Fabrice PIRNAY, Nathalie CRUTZEN
Applied research report (December 2022)
Summary
The company is often a “family business” from the start. It is through the perpetuation of an idea, of a project, generation after generation, that family businesses are born, with, as a main characteristic, the involvement of a family around a long-term vision. While there is no consensus or common definition of what a family business or family is, these specific organizations are held up as examples and praised as models. The literature focuses on its many benefits. However, in reality, these companies face particular difficulties, paradoxes and doubts that are characteristic of their operation, straddling the company and the family.
In this context, we asked ourselves the following questions: what is it that makes this virtuous model still last only a few generations? Is family entrepreneurship as rosy as it is made out to be? Why do some survive wars, crises and generations, while others fail?
It is through the study of lifestyles, of family and entrepreneurial modes of operation, which are constantly changing, that we enrich the understanding of family businesses, with their strengths, weaknesses, limitations and ways of overcoming them, or of rethinking the value of family entrepreneurship.
With the idea that the family model is not necessarily a panacea, we have studied the operating modes, difficulties, solutions and irrevocable decisions (“sacrificing” the family model) that are part of family businesses for the benefit of the family, the business or both.
The purpose of this research is to explore the question of the potential limits of the family model in business, by meeting with entrepreneurs, managers and/or family members to shed light on others.
“When owners start talking about their rights rather than their responsibilities,
a family business is in trouble.”
(J. Smith Lanier, in Astrachan & Pieper, 2011)
A look behind the scenes and the inherent limits of the set