About Hereditarian Principalities: young executives and career demands

Abstract

This study aims to discuss the balance between professional and personal life of young heir executives. We interviewed fifteen young executives from Minas Gerais, Brazil, heirs of medium and big firms. The research showed sources of (in) satisfaction related to the meaning and the work process of these young executives. We discussed how they feel towards the possibilities of career advancing relating the professional obligations and the activities dedicated to personal life and leisure. It was discussed also the contents of the role of the executive to diagnosticate the basic dimensions of the tasks executed related to autonomy, identity of the task and significance of work. The results indicate that the young heir executives are satisfied with the distribution of both time and energy dedicated to work and non-working time. These executives are under a domination system rationally legitimated by parent expectations, a fundamental element in the process of continuity and survival of the firm because they occupy a specific space previously delimitated: they are the “owner children”. Prisoners of their predecessor life work and condemned to win through the continuity of their fathers´ work, the young heir executives take the burden of the heritage to fulfill the role expected since very young.