ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to explore how entrepreneurial behaviours are transmitted and embedded across generations within a Transgenerational Entrepreneurial Family (TEF). Although extant family business research has acknowledged the importance of learning in facilitating the transference of values, norms and attitudes, we know little about how learning embeds entrepreneurial behaviours at the family level. In order to address this, we adopted a longitudinal perspective of four TEF cases, drawing on numerous interviews, archival sources and observational instances. An iterative procedure for data analysis, which involved open coding, within-case analyses, second-order coding and cross-case analysis, was undertaken. Our findings illustrate how the implementation of entrepreneurial behaviours within TEFs was a process of negotiation and reification, informed by differences among families in response to critical incidents. Furthermore, we demonstrate how the presence of entrepreneurial behaviour enablers in each TEF has facilitated the perpetuation of entrepreneurial behaviours. Finally, we illuminate the importance of unlearning, the disregarding of prior learning to accommodate new information and behaviours, in the TEF context, where such entities are faced with unlearning paradoxes that subsequently influence their entrepreneurial behaviours.

摘要

本文的目的是探讨创业行为如何在跨代创业家族 (TEF) 中跨代传递和嵌入。尽管现有的家族企业研究已经承认学习在促进价值观、规范和态度转移方面的重要性，但我们对学习如何在家庭层面嵌入创业行为知之甚少。为了解决这个问题，我们采用了四个 TEF 案例的纵向视角，借鉴了大量访谈、档案来源和观察实例。进行了涉及开放编码、案例内分析、二阶编码和跨案例分析的数据分析迭代程序。我们的发现说明了 TEF 中创业行为的实施是一个谈判和具体化的过程，了解家庭之间在应对重大事件时的差异。此外，我们展示了每个 TEF 中创业行为推动因素的存在如何促进了创业行为的延续。最后，我们阐明了忘记学习的重要性，在 TEF 环境中，无视先前的学习以适应新的信息和行为，在 TEF 环境中，这些实体面临着随后影响其创业行为的忘记学习悖论。