Narrative analysis in family business succession: woman self-legitimation in Italian SMEs

Drawing on the concept of gender identity self-positioning as a narrative, the paper investigates the stories of daughters in four different masculine Italian family businesses characterized by different parental leadership styles. We analyze how daughters use narratives to describe the succession and legitimate their leadership. We show how discursive practices reflect, support and reproduce different approaches to self-positioning. The paper, by proposing an ontological use of narrative to examine the self-positioning of daughters in the family business, offers a way to explore the process leading to female leadership and self-legitimation in masculine contexts.