Daughters’ self-positioning in family business succession: A narrative inquiry

Abstract This article aims to analyze how female successors describe their self-positioning in male-dominated family businesses, once the succession process from father/predecessor to daughter/successor has occurred. Using a narrative approach, we investigated the construction of the self as close to or distant from the father−s leadership style and whether the daughter−s leadership succession was accepted by or imposed on employees of the firm. The four stories that illustrate the process of self-positioning improve our understanding of female successors− subjectivity in developing historically-situated narratives. We identify different pathways by which the daughters constructed their route to self-positioning in their family firms, strengthening the idea of gender as a process embedded in social relationships.