Positive change and transgenerational relationships in family business

Abstract

Italy is a country of small and medium sized enterprises, located contemporarily within local-regional culture and in the international commercial network. A great part of these enterprises are run by single families, involving all family members: this is at the same time both a strength and weakness, as family links can, by one side, improve the individual engagement in work, but may also, on the other side, affect the climate of the whole workspace with incorrect and stressing relational dynamics borrowed from the previously established family relationship. In this chapter the authors discuss the family system as a bio-cultural mechanism and present the role of good management based on Flow theory and its applications.