La fabrique de l’entrepreneur familial. Comment des héritiers deviennent entrepreneurs et reprennent la direction d’une entreprise familiale

Abstract

In this article we try to understand how, in view of a transmission to the next generation, the potential successors to a family business are transformed from the status of heirs to the one of family entrepreneurs. In a first part, we will explain, based on a review of literature, the making of a family entrepreneur, through socialization processes which generate commitment, which in turns enables the upcoming entrepreneurs to accept, or to choose, according to circumstances, the role devolved to them. By crossing these concepts with the literature on Family Business, we show that the familiness concept is both an element an output of the process which makes entrepreneurs, thus reinforcing itself. In a second part, we present both the family and the family business studied. In a third part, so as to provide an understanding of how entrepreneurs are made, we use the concepts presented in part 1 to analyse two transmission processes in the same family business (from the 3rd to the 4th generation, and from the 4th to the 5th generation)