DS DS BÖRJE BOERS Organizational identity construction in family businesses perspective dualities a businesses construction in family Organizational identity a dualities perspective BÖRJE BOERS Organizational identity construction This dissertation is about organizational identity construction with a dualities perspective. By taking a dualities perspective the focus shifts from assuming that in family businesses organizational identity actually is in place towards organizational identity con- a dualities perspective struction where identities are socially constructed. A dualities perspective is very suitable for studying family business where family and business are seen as inter- dependent and interconnected forming a duality. Family business is an identity BÖRJE BOERS statement. Family business identities are constructed by stakeholders by managing a set of dualities. Dualities cause tensions because of the dual poles. These tensions need to be balanced in order to draw on both poles and maintain the family busi- ness identities. In an empirical study of two media organizations dualities of informality- formality, independence-dependence, historic paths-new paths, and commercial- journalistic are used to understand how stakeholders balance the tensions in these dualities and thereby construct organizational identities. The study reveals the central role of owning family members in organizational identity construction. The dualities perspective broadens studies on organizational identity construc- tion as it accounts for the peculiarities of family businesses. I argue that these du- alities are basis for constructing organizational identities that require stakeholders to work with managing the inherent tensions in the dualities. Based on my findings I recommend owning families to consider that being a family business is an identity statement implying that other stakeholders will consider them as role model whether they like it or not. Therefore owning fam- 091 JIBS Dissertation Series No. ily members should devote attention to manage dualities and balance inherent tensions. Jönköping International Business School Jönköping University JIBS Dissertation Series No. 091 • 2013 ISSN 1403-0470 ISBN 978-91-86345-45-7 JIBS DS DS BÖRJE BOERS Organizational identity construction in family businesses perspective dualities a businesses construction in family Organizational identity a dualities perspective BÖRJE BOERS Organizational identity construction This dissertation is about organizational identity construction with a dualities perspective. By taking a dualities perspective the focus shifts from assuming that in family businesses organizational identity actually is in place towards organizational identity con- a dualities perspective struction where identities are socially constructed. A dualities perspective is very suitable for studying family business where family and business are seen as inter- dependent and interconnected forming a duality. Family business is an identity BÖRJE BOERS statement. Family business identities are constructed by stakeholders by managing a set of dualities. Dualities cause tensions because of the dual poles. These tensions need to be balanced in order to draw on both poles and maintain the family busi- ness identities. In an empirical study of two media organizations dualities of informality- formality, independence-dependence, historic paths-new paths, and commercial- journalistic are used to understand how stakeholders balance the tensions in these dualities and thereby construct organizational identities. The study reveals the central role of owning family members in organizational identity construction. The dualities perspective broadens studies on organizational identity construc- tion as it accounts for the peculiarities of family businesses. I argue that these du- alities are basis for constructing organizational identities that require stakeholders to work with managing the inherent tensions in the dualities. Based on my findings I recommend owning families to consider that being a family business is an identity statement implying that other stakeholders will consider them as role model whether they like it or not. Therefore owning fam- 091 JIBS Dissertation Series No. ily members should devote attention to manage dualities and balance inherent tensions. Jönköping International Business School Jönköping University JIBS Dissertation Series No. 091 • 2013 ISSN 1403-0470 ISBN 978-91-86345-45-7 JIBS Organizational identity construction in family businesses a dualities perspective BÖRJE BOERS Jönköping International Business School P.O. Box 1026 SE-551 11 Jönköping Tel.: +46 36 10 10 00 E-mail: [email protected] www.jibs.se Organizational identity construction in family businesses a dualities perspective JIBS Dissertation Series No. 091 © 2013 Börje Boers and Jönköping International Business School ISSN 1403-0470 ISBN 978-91-86345-45-7 Printed by ARK Tryckaren AB, 2013 2 Acknowledgement While many other exciting things happened in my life, my PhD studies has become a journey full of inspiration, excitement, accomplishment, and of course challenges, and sometimes confusion, and even frustration, but eventually it is a rewarding work. I regard it as a valuable life experience, therefore I appreciate the chance that I could devote my time and energy to my enthusiastic research work and I acknowledge that it was not a journey on my own; the company and support from JIBS, my supervisors, my colleagues, my lifelong friends and my family build up the spirit of my work. I thank my supervisors Leif Melin and Mattias Nordqvist for their continuous and critical support. Leif, you always made me think positive about my research and after every meeting I felt energized. You raised difficult and important questions with which I struggled. Mattias, you challenged me along the way which helped me developing not only as a PhD candidate. Your advice has been helpful. You two introduced me to the fascinating world of academics. Thank you! I also thank my third supervisor Majken Schultz who gave me valuable comments. These comments helped me to improve my dissertation. Thanks also to Jenny Helin and Olof Brunninge for discussing my research proposal and Stefan Svenningsson for discussing my final seminar manuscript. I am grateful to Robert Picard, Karl Erik Gustafsson and Heinz-Werner Nienstedt. Through their contacts I got access to the organizations I studied. I am similarly thankful to all the people I met at Mediengruppe Rheinische Post (MRP) and Stampen who devoted valuable time for taking part in my research. JIBS is an interesting place with amazing people. I cannot imagine writing a dissertation at another place. JIBS is full of contradictions and ambiguities. The people at JIBS make it unique. I thank Monica Bartels and Katharina Blåman who were always helpful and helped me settling at JIBS and in Jönköping. Similarly, Britt Martinsson and Tanja Andersson helped out on plenty occasions and made life at JIBS viable. I started my PhD studies together with Anna Jenkins, Lianguang Cui, Olga Sasinovskaya, and Magda Markowska. It was good to be a group starting together and getting used to being a PhD student at JIBS. Anna’s hospitality and Magda’s cooking skills are unforgettable! JIBS’ international spirit is visible not the least in former and current employees like Hamid Jafari, Imran Nazir, Francesco Chirico, Duncan Levinson, Karin Hellerstedt, Naveed Ahkter, Sara Ekberg, Friederike Welter, Benjamin Hartmann, Berit Hartmann, Anna Blombäck, Kajsa Haag, Jan Weiss, Massimo Baú, Mona Ericsson, Anders Melander, Erik Hunter, Johan Wiklund, Alex McKelvie, Leona Achtenhagen, Rolf Lundin, Annika Hall, Hanna Almlöf, Guiseppe Criaco, Gershon Kumeto, Markus Plate, Jan-Olof Müller, Lucia 3 Naldi, Fredrik Lundell, Lars-Göran Sund, Jenny Helin, Maya Hoveskog, Yana Mamleeva, Lisa Bäckvall, Ethel Brundin, Olof Brunninge and many more. To all those people I forgot to mention, sorry! This is not on purpose. Special thanks go to Jean Charles Languilaire who supported me as a friend and helped me developing professionally. Merci beaucoup! Thanks also to the numerous participants at JIBS, ESOL, MMTC, CeFEO research seminars through which I learned a lot. These seminars have often provided useful and explicit feedback as well as generated new ideas. It is therefore always a pleasure taking part in these seminars. Finally I want to thank my family who always supported me. Danke Mama, Nina und Klaus! Hong, Lineus and Lena, I love you! Jönköping, August 2013 Börje Boers 4 Abstract This dissertation is about organizational identity construction with a dualities perspective. By taking a dualities perspective the focus shifts from assuming that organizational identity actually is in place towards organizational identity construction where identities are socially constructed. A dualities perspective is very suitable for studying family business where family and business are seen as interdependent and interconnected forming a duality. Family business is an identity statement. Family business identities are constructed by stakeholders by managing a set of dualities. Dualities cause tensions because of the dual poles. These tensions need to be balanced in order to draw on both poles and maintain the family business identities. In an empirical study of two media organizations dualities of informality- formality, independence-dependence, historic paths-new paths, and commercial-journalistic are used to understand how stakeholders balance