Maria Jose Parada, Georges Samara, Alexandra Dawson and Eduard Bonet
Despite the great importance attributed to values in the family business, few studies have focused on their importance and on how such values influence the way family businesses…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite the great importance attributed to values in the family business, few studies have focused on their importance and on how such values influence the way family businesses behave over time. Using Aristotelian virtues as our main framework, the purpose of this paper is to understand what motivates both family members and business families to perform virtuous acts, therefore, observing the underlying beliefs at both levels of analysis that make individuals and families repeatedly behave in a way that reflects the pursuit of excellence of character.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors rely on a qualitative methodology, following an interpretive approach. Based on the narratives of family members from two Spanish family businesses, the authors abductively analyze how values and virtues in family businesses allow them to cope with changes that occur across generations.
Findings
Findings suggest that family businesses that have survived heavy crises have been able to overcome these critical moments in part due to their strong virtues – both at the individual and at the family level – where the so-called four cardinal virtues have been evident, for example, through the achievement of collective goals and adherence to a stated mission, as well as through behaviors that have been aimed at improving and benefiting the community.
Practical implications
Values are the basis for all businesses and their behaviors. Understanding the type of values, as well as the underlying virtues, that allow for prosperity across generations is important for business families to perpetuate those that allow the family business to thrive.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the family business field by exploring a key understudied dimension that determines family business prosperity over time and across generations. It brings to the forefront values and virtues that are rarely studied in this setting despite their great importance, using narratives as a key element for value transmission as well as a research method that allows for deeper insights about specific processes.
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The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to clarify that narratives have a rhetorical dimension, whose study has to be considered an important part of rhetoric (this claim is…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to clarify that narratives have a rhetorical dimension, whose study has to be considered an important part of rhetoric (this claim is not accepted by important scholars). The arguments are based on the properties that narratives are very persuasive and that they are implicitly involved in the three species of rhetoric (deliberative, judicial and celebrative) introduced by Aristotle in his Rhetoric. Second, narratives are strongly related to the concept of intentional action or human action that has a purpose, a mental project and the execution of the act, such it is defined in the classical paper by Alfred Schutz common-sense and scientific interpretation of human action (1953). This property relates narratives with phenomenology, epistemology of social sciences and management research and practice.
Design/methodology/approach
This research is a theoretical work based on the study of central concepts of rhetoric, narratives, historiography and epistemology of social sciences and it uncovers the narrative aspects involved in intentional action. As a theoretical study, it does not include empirical studies, but it points out some kinds of management activities, such as creating projects and case studies.
Findings
It uncovers the relationships between rhetoric and narratives, and between narratives and intentional action. If offers a new conceptual frame that can be very productive.
Originality/value
This conceptual approach is new. It clarifies important misunderstandings about narrativity, facts, meanings and interpretations.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to examine how the boundaries of rhetoric have excluded important theoretical and practical subjects and how these subjects are recuperated and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how the boundaries of rhetoric have excluded important theoretical and practical subjects and how these subjects are recuperated and extended since the twentieth century. Its purpose is to foster the awareness on emerging new trends of rhetoric.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology is based on an interpretation of the history of rhetoric and on the construction of a conceptual framework of the rhetoric of judgment, which is introduced in this paper.
Findings
On the subject of the extension of rhetoric from public speeches to any kinds of persuasive situations, the paper emphasizes some stimulating relationships between the theory of communication and rhetoric. On the exclusion and recuperation of the subject of rhetorical arguments, it presents the changing relationships between rhetoric and dialectics and emphasizes the role of rhetoric in scientific research. On the introduction of rhetoric of judgment and meanings it creates a conceptual framework based on a re-examination of the concept of judgment and the phenomenological foundations of the interpretative methods of social sciences by Alfred Schutz, relating them to symbolic interactionism and theories of the self.
Originality/value
The study on the changing boundaries of rhetoric and the introduction of the rhetoric of judgment offers a new view on the present theoretical and practical development of rhetoric, which opens new subjects of research and new fields of applications.
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Keywords
The purpose of this article is to present and revisit the role of rhetoric and narratives in management research and practice.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to present and revisit the role of rhetoric and narratives in management research and practice.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors revisit the insights from previous work on the role of rhetoric and narratives in management research and introduce new perspectives based on the original contributions included in this special issue.
Findings
There is an ongoing need to stress the importance of narrative and rhetorical perspectives in management research, specifically for exploring the managing of meanings, the coaching of virtues and the mediating of rhetoric.
Originality/value
The paper revisits and provides new insights on the role of rhetoric and narratives in management research and emphasizes the interrelationship between both, specifically by focusing on the conceptual framework of Kenneth Burke, whose work can be situated at the intersection of rhetoric and narrative.
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Nuria Nadal-Burgues and Eduard Bonet
The purpose of this paper is to present new aspects of the tension between creativity and productivity and improve the understanding on how research can be developed in very…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present new aspects of the tension between creativity and productivity and improve the understanding on how research can be developed in very restricted environments, such as the context of an organization managed using the methods of Project Management. And more generally, it introduces the rhetoric of judgment as a fundamental aspect involved in the development and specification of projects.
Design/methodology/approach
The theoretical approach is based on the phenomenological theory of human intentional action developed by Alfred Schutz, in which the notion of mental project is more flexible than that of project management. In it the concepts of subaction and repeated action are considered a combination of similar actions already performed. The Kantian notion of judgment is introduced to outline self-persuasion as a fundamental source of creativity.
Findings
The introduction of an extended notion of project and routine involving judgment expands the rational, generic and technical notion of project management. And the rhetorical aspect of judgment, at the individual level, establishes the possibility to deliver unexpected outcomes that are considered creative.
Originality/value
The proposed notions of project and routines mediated through the rhetoric of judgment present theoretical and practical progress in the subject of managing projects.
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Oriol Iglesias and Eduard Bonet
The purpose of this paper is to build a conceptual framework that enables an improved comprehension of how brand meaning is constructed.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to build a conceptual framework that enables an improved comprehension of how brand meaning is constructed.
Design/methodology/approach
Conceptual implications are drawn from an analysis and discussion of the literature in the fields of brand management, meanings, rhetoric, and narratives.
Findings
Brand managers are progressively losing control over the multiple sources of brand meaning. Brand meaning is co‐created during the consumer‐brand relationship and the customer‐perceived brand meaning is re‐interpreted at each touchpoint that a consumer has with a managerially determined brand interface, a brand employee, or an external stakeholder.
Originality/value
“Persuasive brand management” is presented as a new approach to brand management. It considers that the main activities of managers regarding brand strategy decisions involve processes of interpreting and creating meanings; as well as persuading a wide diversity of internal and external stakeholders.
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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of rhetorical and narrative strategies in the foundational text of Service-Dominant (S-D) Logic. The author argues that the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of rhetorical and narrative strategies in the foundational text of Service-Dominant (S-D) Logic. The author argues that the success of Vargo and Lusch's (2004a) paper in establishing the foundational premises of the new S-D Logic is greatly aided by their persuasive use of classical rhetorical techniques of word choice, metaphor, and framing as well as the careful construction of a narrative that is guaranteed to be attractive to their audience.
Design/methodology/approach
The author uses techniques of rhetorical and narrative analysis to closely examine some of the principle argument in the foundational text of S-D Logic.
Findings
The author finds that Vargo and Lusch (2004a) make use of a powerful narrative of redemption in which marketing is seen to be saved from a potentially destructive internal struggle by a revelatory shift in perspective. The choice of key framing terms such as “logic”, “evolution”, and “paradigm” is found to have an important rhetorical effect in supporting this persuasive narrative and helping to cast it in a scientifically “inevitable” light.
Originality/value
The findings speak to the vital role played in academic marketing, and in the successful promulgation of a new movement within the academic marketing community, of persuasive language and narrative.