Generational brokerage: An intersubjective perspective on managing temporal orientations in family firm succession
通过嵌入式案例研究，探讨家族企业继任中代际时间取向差异引发的紧张关系，提出代际中介作为交互主体过程，帮助不同代际成员通过时间工作达成共同理解。
Interactions between family members of different generations often unleash powerful tensions in family firms. Intergenerational tensions can be particularly prominent during intra-family succession as a result of the different temporal orientations of senior and junior generation family members. However, scant systematic attention has thus far been paid to understanding the temporality of intergenerational tensions in family firms. Through an embedded case study, we explore the mediation process that helps family firms manage intergenerational tensions by way of temporal work. Our investigation of an advisory firm and its clients led us to identify generational brokerage as the intersubjective process through which temporal work enables generations toward the joint understanding of temporal orientations. Our theoretical insights have significant implications for developing a temporal view of succession and add novel important knowledge to research on mediation and time. Indeed, we show that generational brokerage is a dialectic construct with organizing properties able to blend disparate research streams by going beyond a unidirectional forward-flowing logic of time in examining organizational processes.