Gendered Discourse about Family Business

Abstract: Language patterns of family business owners were explored by identifying discourse styles and emphasized ideas in four presenting contexts: business, family, intersection of family and business, and business success. The content analysis supports the existence of a general discourse style within family businesses and of similarities and differences between men and women in emphasized ideas as they frame their family businesses. The emotional discourse style (words of personal involvement, concern, and preference) was prominent across contexts for both genders, and there was a distinct absence of analytical language. Women had a higher emotional discourse style score for managing the business than did men, and balanced their emotional language with the practicality of planning tasks and creating efficiencies. Key Words: discourse, discourse analysis, family, gender, work. Business-owning families manage their work lives by negotiating the intersection of entrepreneurial endeavors with family obligations (Danes & Olson, 2003; Parasuranman, Purohit, Godshalk, & Beutell, 1996). Professionals who work with families in business need to understand the complex dynamics that this ongoing multisystem negotiation entails. These dynamics include how family members talk about their work, which reveals differences in how family members, such as spousal co-owners, may perceive their situation. Differences in perception are related to differences in actions, so understanding talk is an important part of understanding family business sustainability. Professionals who attend to how business owners talk about both the family and business aspects of their enterprise will be more effective in their consultant roles (Budge & Janoff, 1991). The complexity of working with family businesses evolves from the fact that they are composed of two unique systems that often overlap to varying degrees depending on situational circumstances (Stafford, Duncan, Danes, & Winter, 1999). In attempting to simplify the human dynamics within these complex family businesses, the systems of family and business often are described with labels such as emotional (family) and rational (business) arenas, and are prescribed with opposing tasks, values, goals, and rules. Outcomes emanating from this simplistic approach have some strong gender implications. Within the family business literature, the tendency is to consider the family as the system that impedes the functioning of the business (Borwick, 1986; Danes, Zuiker, Kean, & Arbuthnot, 1999; Ward, 1997). Much of that literature is based on case studies of family businesses with extensive problems or dysfunction. Within this same literature, women often are seen as problematic to family business functioning, and the family is viewed as needing to be managed (Budge & Janoff, 1991; Whiteside & Brown, 1991). Further, the role of women within the business system of family businesses often is characterized by the metaphor of "the invisible woman"; this phenomenon is explained by suggesting that the roles and rules of the family system (many of which are genderspecified) often are unconsciously integrated into the family business culture (Danes & Olson, 2003; Hollander & Bukowitz, 2002). In actuality, we know empirically little about the distinct manner in which men and women make sense of their family businesses. A contributing factor to this lack of knowledge is that much of what is written about family businesses comes through the discourses of psychology, accounting, business management, finance, or law rather than the discourse that family business owners use. As a result, little is known about the social context of language in family businesses, or the gendered discourse of that language. This study examined those voids and explicated the discourse of family business owners with two purposes: to identify language patterns used by male and female family business owners to describe the dynamics of their family businesses, and to identify ideas that are emphasized as they talk about their businesses. …