Women play crucial roles in family businesses the world over. Yet their influence is often overlooked. Too often they are treated as supporting players – or ignored completely. Within the Centre for Family Business here at Lancaster, many of us are members of families in business. We wanted to challenge these perceptions of passivity and a lack of influence on business operations and success. Our experiences have shown us how women have a vital role to play in the longevity and continuity of family firms. Yet we have become increasingly aware that little had been said about this reality in certain areas of the world where women have always engaged in family business. WHAT WE KNEW Women’s contributions to the endurance of business operations through successive generations has been considered marginal because of society’s predominantly patriarchal structure. Alongside my colleagues Ellie Hamilton and Sarah Jack, our work focused on my homeland of Honduras, a developing Latin American country. Honduras has a population of around 9.6 million and a GDP of about US$31.7 billion. The business landscape is dominated by family firms. In this environment, male-dominated cultural norms and expectations may characterise local family businesses, with men often designated as business leaders and successors entitled to make key strategic decisions. The role of women in this context has been poorly understood. They are often hidden or relegated to a supportive or social role, rarely considered as leading or influencing the firm. STEREOTYPES Our study examines the role of women in family business continuity, challenging common misconceptions about their role and illustrating how they can best approach the continuity of family businesses. We were encouraged to challenge the current understanding, highlighting and championing the different roles of women in family businesses that have not only survived but thrived. At the outset, we were aware that despite women around the world being acknowledged as the unsung heroes who ensure harmony within a family in business, they are often perceived as underrepresented in senior management roles. We speculated that the contribution of women to family business continuity is influenced by the circumstances they find themselves in. If they are a mother, a spouse, and a business executive, then those roles may be influenced by how things are done both in the household and in business. STEWARDSHIP We started with the premise that the role of women in family business continuity may relate to behaving like a steward, looking after the interests of both the family and the business. Latin American cultures are highly hierarchical, collectivist, and reliant on a strong family logic, suggesting that gender roles are clearly defined. Yet we wanted to go beyond that and explore whether their role could be better appreciated as entrepreneurial stewards, going beyond maintaining existing ventures and showing a commitment to stewardship that aims to grow and build the family’s assets. To start untangling how women contribute to the continuity of family businesses as entrepreneurial stewards, we decided to examine situations in which they were formally appointed to executive or leadership positions. Across three businesses we studied, we encountered the crucial role women play in the continuity of a family firm during crises. Crises were mentioned as stories, filled with emotional accounts, unfolded. Economic downturns, 24 |
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