Between filial piety and managerial opportunism: The strategic use of the history of a family business after the buyout by non-family purchasers

Through the qualitative case study of a French business school which used to be a family firm for two generations during the nineteenth century – the Higher School of Commerce of Paris presently named ESCP Europe – this study demonstrates that family business can become, through the writing of its history, an arena for emotional confrontation. Indeed, while witnesses of the family era used the history of the former family business to preserve its alma mater, its new purchasers used it to demonstrate that, unlike their predecessors, they succeeded in increasing the firm's prosperity at a level that had never been achieved before. Historical family business narratives can therefore serve both as indicators of the emotional tensions that run through the firm and as strategic levers for shaping the future of the firm.