The Leaders, the Outcasts, and the Others: Which Role for Daughters in Family Businesses?

In the last few decades, women’s involvement in family business ownership, governance, and management has been slowly but gradually increasing and the binomial “daughters and succession” has become extremely relevant. This evolution is changing the physiognomy of the succession process, resulting in new scenarios for family businesses and new perspectives of research and analysis. However, only some scholars have focused their attention on daughters’ role in the succession process. This chapter investigates this topic to describe possible roles that they may assume in family businesses. Based on a multiple case study, five daughters’ profiles have been outlined: Leader by choice, Leader because “she has to”, Manager by choice, Invisible co-leader, Outcast. Each profile is characterised by distinctive features with regard to: 1) personal goals and ambitions before entering the family firm; 2) push/pull reasons for joining the family firm 3) daughters’ effective role in the family firm; 4) motives that brought daughters to play a particular role in the family firm; 5) training and skills; 6) satisfaction/dissatisfaction of their role in the family firm. The chapter provides three important contributions to the debate about daughters and family business succession. First, evidence indicates that not all daughters with a leadership role show similar motivations and ambitions. Some daughters have desired to take on a leadership role since childhood and strongly pursued their goals with success (leaders by choice). In contrast, others become leaders “despite themselves” since no other family members have been concerned or likely to lead the family business (leader because “they have to”). Second, daughters’ exclusion from family business succession persists. Daughters who aspire to leadership sometimes have to accept a minor role (invisible co-leaders), mainly because gender preferences in favour of male family heirs persist. In other cases, daughters are unwilling to accept a minor role and decide to leave the firm (outcasts) because of the predecessor’s closure and hostility based on the gender issue. Third, results show that the marginal role of daughters in family businesses is not always the result of gender discrimination. Some daughters can be satisfied with their secondary role (managers by choice) because it can allow them to be flexible in managing their work-life balance.