Meaning and Practice of Tradition within Long-lasting Family Businesses: a Phenomenographic Enquiry

Adopting phenomenography as a qualitative interpretive variance approach, the study investigates tradition as a practice in the context of long-lasting family firms. As tradition is perceived by managers both as a source of competitive advantage and as a constraint in innovating, we explore how managers give meaning to tradition and, consequently, how they practise it. In line with previous phenomenographic studies, qualitative data show variance in the way tradition is understood and practised. The study theoretically contributes to family business literature unveiling four different understandings of tradition: tradition as a company feature; tradition as a family feature; tradition as a brand feature and tradition as a relational feature. The study shows practical implications for business families: understanding the different ways in which tradition could be managed and practised could help next-generation family members in exploiting the advantages of tradition according to the specific way in which they are experiencing it.