Event Details

A recent paper by Radu-Lefebvre, Davis, and Gartner (2024)* offers a systematic literature review of legacy in family business.

Drawing on the critical appraisal of 140 texts on legacy spanning 27 years of research in family business, the authors elaborate a process model of legacy which highlights senders and receivers of legacy and their motivations for sending, accepting or rejecting legacy, the family and business mechanisms through which legacy is sent and received, and the contexts in which legacy is built, interpreted and used. This model offers a novel conceptualization of legacy building, interpretation and use as fundamentally co-constructed and relational in nature. Legacy senders and receivers are mutually dependent for enacting legacy over time and jointly engaged in legacy co-construction and re-construction, these actions being guided by internal reasons (motivations) and bounded by external settings (contexts). At the intersection of senders’ and receivers’ motivations, convergence and divergence happen and orient the becoming of legacy in family firms. A forthcoming Special issue on Legacy in the journal Academy of Management Perspectives takes a similar perspective, while broadening the scope of legacy research to individuals, families/groups, and organizations beyond family firms. This talk aims to provide opportunities to reflect on the theoretical and methodological implications of this conceptualization and to highlight the complexity of researching legacy through a social constructivist lens.

*Radu-Lefebvre, M., Davis, J. H., & Gartner, W. B. (2024). Legacy in family business: A systematic literature review and future research agenda. Family Business Review, 37(1), 18-59.

** Academy of Management Perspectives (forthcoming) - "Echoes of the past: capturing the influence of legacy on individuals, families and organization" (Guest editors: James H. Davis, Miruna Radu-Lefebvre, William B. Gartner, Sarah Jack, Alfredo de Massis, & Gideon Markman)