Family Business Leaders’ Metaphors and Firm Performance: Exploring the “Roots” and “Shoots” of Symbolic Meanings
研究采用摩根的组织意象访谈技术，分析六家意大利家族酒店，揭示家族领导者的根隐喻如何通过关系和创新机制影响企业绩效。
To investigate the complex dynamics when family members with differing perceptions and interpretations of reality jointly lead their family business, this research adopts an epistemic-operative interview technique using Morgan’s images of organization. We explore how family leaders’ root metaphors, which are symbolic frames that help understand individuals’ attitudes and behaviors, are linked to family businesses’ behavior and performance. Analyzing six Italian family hotels, we derive four structures of family symbolic meanings and explain how and why relationships and innovation are mechanisms through which firm performance is related and connected to the offshoots of the meanings of family leaders’ root metaphors.