Entrepreneuring as emancipation in family business succession: a story of agony and ecstasy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Following Alistair Anderson’s legacy of entrepreneuring as a process of becoming, this paper engages with entrepreneuring as emancipation in a family business context. Over a period of seven years, we witnessed the journey of a family business successor engaged in a challenging process of power transfer, ultimately leading him to leave the succession process to engage with entrepreneuring outside the family business, due to power struggles. We theoretically elaborate on this real-time, multi-informant, multi-generational and longitudinal single-case study to offer a novel understanding of entrepreneuring as emancipation from and through power by revealing the intimate connections of entrepreneuring with power, liberation and liberty encompassing as much agony as ecstasy.