Contextual Bricolage and the Founder’s Apprehension in the inter-generational Succession of Small Family Businesses

Small family businesses (SFBs) encounter disruption during the inter-generational succession that has drawn attention to the founder’s apprehension but has overlooked the contextual attention in intensity and inter-contextual interaction. Inter-contextual interaction refers to the combination of two contexts such as actors and place or timing and structure. This article addresses this question to explore the salience of contextual intensity and bricolage between two contexts (e.g. actors and place) through a two-stage method. First, we used qualitative data and codified it, using content analysis. Second, we used quantified content analysis for the intensity and bricolage within and between contextual attention of the founder. We applied the contextual bricolage framework based on five rhetorical contexts as variables. Based on 200 questions used in the 18 in-depth interviews with founders engaged in the process of inter-generation succession, we coded the data along with the interview questions as observations and the contextual elements as the variable, for a descriptive analysis of the themes and inter-contextual bricolage of correlations. The findings of basic statistical analysis for the exploratory purpose show the result in two stages: inter-contextual bricolage of five rhetorical contexts and inter-actor intensity against functions and structures. In the inter-contextual bricolage, function-structure (r = 83 %), actor-structure (r = 81 %), and function-actor (r = 79 %) take the top position in the bricolage. In the inter-actor bricolage vis-à-vis functions and structures, the collective (we), children (they), and the self (I), and the parent (family) show high inter-correlations with functions and structures. Our analysis of this study supports bricolage, identifies inter-contextual bricolage, and highlights the salience of function and structures with actors within and between rhetorical references. Spatial and temporal concerns appear weaker in the SFB succession in Thailand.