Family Business Metaphors : Envisioning Images of Peaceful and Sustainable Organizations

Typically, business tenets advise: never go into business with your family. This book proposes that this discrepancy may actually be at the core of modern problems: social harm and environmental problems are largely related to advancements focused on current dualistic metaphors that value only the business dimension and devalue the family. This book aims to offer an alternative viewpoint, by discussing how core beliefs linked to various metaphors change the way we conduct and perform in our lives and businesses, so that the reader can practice sustainable methods, which also includes the family. Situating family businesses as the primordial way of social organizing, chapters explore definitions of organizational symbolism, metaphors, and archetypes in order to guide readers and change the way we consider the family role within business and the economy. Presentation: “Worlding” the Family Business 7 Premise: A Ballroom Dance Metaphor 9 Reference 12 Acknowledgments 13 Contents 14 Contents 15 Introduction: The Light and the Exception 16 Chapter 1: Images of Reality: Metaphors, Archetypes, Symbols, and Cultures 19 The Uniqueness of Unconscious Images of Human Consciousness 20 Narratives and Representations 21 Narratives in Family Firms 23 The Basis of Social Constructionism 24 Culture: The Conscious as Knowledge of Reality and the Unconscious 25 Organizational Symbolism 27 Images of Organizational Actors: Metaphors Between Consciousness and Unconsciousness 28 Metaphors, Root Metaphors, and Organizations 30 Related to Metaphors: Myths 31 From Metaphors to Archetypes 33 Symbolism, Archetypes, Metaphors in Organizations and Family Firms 36 References 37 Chapter 2: Images in Existing Family Business Theories: Metaphors and Root Metaphors 43 Visualizing Images in Family Business Theories 44 A Constructionist Perspective on Family Business Organizations 45 The Rhetoric of Family Business Theory 46 Viewing Family Businesses as Systems 48 Family Firms’ Graphical Metaphors: The Circles 48 The Objectification of the Family Business: The Entity, Its Boundaries, and Structure 50 The Personification of the Family Business: Its Goals, Dispositions, and Identity 54 The Input-Output Model 56 Viewing Family Businesses as Contracts 59 To Talk About Eye-Opening Metaphors Should We Put an Eye on the Observer? 64 References 65 Chapter 3: Family Metaphors in Business 70 Imagining a Business as a Family 71 When the Business Is a Baby 72 When the Business Is a Marriage 76 When the Business Is a Family 78 The Strict Father Model 83 The Nurturant Parent Model 84 Transcending Boundaries 85 References 86 Chapter 4: Visualizing Sustainability: The Visible and the Invisible 90 Family Businesses and the Power of Vision: The Visible 91 Family Businesses and the Power of Vision: The Invisible 93 The Image of the Family Through History as Myth-Making 95 Looking at Family Development Through History: The Meaning of Fatherhood and Motherhood 96 The Emerging Image of Family Business Sustainability 100 Seeing the Evolution 102 References 104 Chapter 5: When Two Become One 107 “Abstractization” and Concreteness 108 The Duality Principle: Mother and Father Archetypes 110 The War Metaphor in Business Studies 113 Patriarchy 115 Matriarchy 116 The Peace Metaphor 120 New Images: The Metaphor of an Experiential Existence 121 New Images: The Metaphor of Faith 124 R/esistence: Resistance and Re-existence 125 References 127