ABSTRACT
We found one common denominator that prevented these dynamics spiralling out of control and by this stagnate or destroy the business. All the families would spend time thinking through and negotiating the authority individuals or the family would have. It would be an ongoing process and would be monitored. This chapter focuses on how strategizing authority prevented negative succession dynamics, further rivalry and conflict. Such negotiation was also the source of innovative and win-win arrangements, and new entrepreneurship. We found that, when conflicts and tensions arose, the family would generate an intervention or action that focused on the tasks for ownership and the business. Strategizing the tension between individuals’ drive, family ownership goals and business goals would lead to new entrepreneurship as a solution. Further, this proved to be a healthy mechanism
for managing what can be, in successful family ownership, a concentration of prestige, wealth and power that can have a detrimental effect on the human mind. In this way they would rework the authority arrangements (Hirschhorn, 1998) within the family in relation to ownership goals and business goals. This would be the basis for balancing and aligning a sense of entitlement with the reality principle of business needs and goals.
