{"id":1771,"date":"2025-10-01T08:05:46","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T06:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/family-business\/?p=1771"},"modified":"2025-12-09T12:39:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T11:39:10","slug":"family-values-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/family-business\/2025\/family-values-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Family values: legacy is co-created, not handed down"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest contributor: Tarek el Sehity<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Tarek el Sehity is a researcher and lecturer at Sigmund Freud University in Vienna.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cFor things to remain the same, everything must change.\u201d
\n<\/em>Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

This enduring wisdom captures a fundamental truth for business families that have withstood the test of time: preserving the values that truly matter requires continuous evolution in how they are embodied.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This notion of change as part of a larger strategic adaptation<\/strong> emerged as a central theme of our latest research on the transmission of family values in multigenerational family-owned firms<\/a>, which builds on a previous study <\/a>on shared family purpose.<\/p>\n

Shared values as common threads<\/span><\/h2>\n

As part of our study, we conducted 23 in-depth interviews with eight Austrian business families<\/strong> that represented two to six generations of leadership. Of particular interest was how shared values manifest in authentic intergenerational interactions<\/strong> within the family enterprise.<\/p>\n

As our study revealed, enduring foundational values<\/strong> with cross-generational impact<\/strong> are not passed down like family heirlooms. Rather, values endure only when each generation\u00a0is able to reformulate them in a co-creative process <\/strong>through dialogue, friction and unifying objectives within the firm.<\/p>\n

We use the term \u201cfamily value composites<\/strong>\u201d for these outcomes to reflect their evolving nature: configurations of shared meaning that are created and cultivated across generations.<\/p>\n

The language of legacy<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

In the language of legacy, the word \u201ctransmission\u201d\u00a0implies fixed content that moves in one direction from seniors to juniors. This perspective obscures two realities of family business. <\/strong><\/p>\n

First, the leaders of family-owned firms must consider the agency of the next generation<\/strong>\u2014children, adolescents and young adults\u2014who are not content to passively receive and follow set-in-stone values. They question, reinterpret and sometimes invert them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The family enterprise as amplifier<\/strong> is also key.\u00a0Business families live their values out loud in their hiring practices, governance, philanthropy and strategy. They bring their family values to life in visible and consequential ways every day in the family business.<\/p>\n

Changing family values, a sign of the times<\/span><\/h2>\n

Our study revealed that prosocial and relational values<\/strong> such as fairness, sustainability and trust were often sustained across generations, but not by replication.<\/p>\n

Next-generation members integrated them\u00a0because\u00a0they had seen them modeled <\/strong>and were able to appreciate and effectively apply them<\/strong> in today\u2019s context.<\/p>\n

Younger generations also might decide to reevaluate and hierarchically invert the current family values<\/strong>. For example, one of the subjects in our study included an heir to a meat processing plant who rejected animal slaughter on ethical grounds. His ethical stance inspired the launch of a plant-based product line, in turn transforming\u00a0the business while sustaining its entrepreneurial vision.<\/p>\n

In another case, third-generation members sought to break away from the founding patriarch\u2019s opaque and controlling management style by institutionalizing the values of open feedback and transparency<\/strong> into the firm\u2019s corporate culture. What began as resistance matured into a new, shared leadership ethos.<\/p>\n

Values in evolution<\/span><\/h2>\n

As these real-life examples show, companies have the power of successfully transforming their strategy to reflect the family\u2019s evolving values<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The outcomes of these value inversions are not opposites so much as dialectical partners: inversions at one transition often set the stage for renewed congruence at the next<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In an upcoming post, we\u2019ll delve into the pillars of this co-creative process<\/strong> in multigenerational family firms, as well as key insights<\/strong> to put them into practice.<\/p>\n

Homepage image: <\/em>\u00a0Floriane Vita<\/a> on <\/em>Unsplash<\/em><\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest contributor: Tarek el Sehity Tarek el Sehity is a researcher and lecturer at Sigmund Freud University in Vienna. \u201cFor things to remain the same, everything must change.\u201d Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard This enduring wisdom captures a fundamental truth for business families that have withstood the test of time: preserving the values that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":665,"featured_media":1772,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,981],"tags":[117559,119667,117532],"class_list":["post-1771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-leadership","tag-family-legacy","tag-family-values","tag-shared-values","megacategoria-mc-family-business"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/family-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/family-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/family-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/family-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/665"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/family-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1771"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/family-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1774,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/family-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions\/1774"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/family-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/family-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/family-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/family-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}