Organizations, representations and syncretism: the experience of a family company facing changes and managerial successions

Family organizations are very often conceived and defined from criteria such as ownership, management and succession in relation to members of a same consanguine family. The goal of this research is to detect managers and employees different representations that emerge in time and space in organizational discourse from the notion of family representations. Thus, the study is based in empirical evidence issue from a longitudinal study of a case of a family-owned company. The research results suggest a process of representational multiplicity and syncretism that appears as the organization, its managers and employees are represented through time using a family vocabulary. Implications for organization studies and studies focused on family organizations topic are proposed, as well as directions for future research.