| Eighteen million family businesses operate in the United States. Within these businesses, family and non-family members create two distinct groups of stakeholders, which engender in-group and out-group issues. Relationships between these two groups of stakeholders have remained relatively invisible and unexamined. In addition, current literature indicates that long-held beliefs about families are changing. Yet, many family businesses appear bound to the traditional meanings ascribed to the construct family. Within a social constructionistic frame, two areas of curiosity guided this naturalistic qualitative research study: (a) interrelational aspects of family and non-family stakeholders and (b) meanings family and non-family stakeholders ascribe to the notion of family as a component of the family business. Thirty-five stakeholders from 11 family firms participated in this research study. Results indicated that entities of blended family businesses appeared practical, especially for family businesses that were beyond their first generation. Some family firms, in second-, third-, and forth-generation, believed that the survival of their firms may be dependent on a blend of family and nonfamily personnel, thus creating a blended family enterprise. |
