Father to son: the complexity and the challenges of management of the family business

Abstract

For his contribution to the Brazilian economy, family businesses occupy a prominent position within the business. Many large companies in the country are, or have already been familiar in its essence, that number could be even higher if not for the complexities faced by these organizations during their generations. Thus, this paper addresses the issue of family business management in order to study the characteristics of management and governance, professional and organizational culture, pointing thus contributions to the huge network of family businesses in Brazil - the most common type of organization in the country. Thus, the objective of this study was to investigate and analyze these theoretical main characteristics in family businesses small and medium-sized segmented in trade of the Vale do Sinos/RS. For this, the present study was based from various authors, such as Davis and Frezza (2005), Bornholdt (2005), Casillas, Vazquez and Diaz (2007) and Adams (2009). We used this exploratory work through multiple case study, by means of data collection done through unstructured interview. It was found that some changes occur not only in terms of professional appearance, but by way of management and business decision-making. Some of these processes are often performed more and more worked on some family business focus of this study, however, pointed out that all these aspects should be part of the organizational dynamics of family organizations object of this study.