Firms as Quasi-Traditions: The Moral Backbone of Social Legacy
通过对近300年历史的Rathbones PLC的历史档案研究，揭示家族企业中的社会遗产如何作为道德脊梁，帮助企业作为准传统在危机中保持连续性，对研究家族企业传承的学者和管理者有启发。
In family firms, social legacies have been characterized as fragile and likely to be abandoned as firms face cycles of crises and change that impact the utility of such legacies, and yet we know that social legacies can and do endure across time and space, even beyond the tenure of the founding family. We explore intergenerational dynamics in family firms and specifically address the “social legacy” concept, which has received remarkably little empirical and theoretical attention. We elaborate how social legacies are shaped across time and space by drawing upon a historical-archival study of Rathbones PLC, a firm with a near-300-year history, to illustrate that firms can be understood as quasi-traditions and, furthermore, that a social legacy can provide firms with a moral backbone that anchors the quasi-tradition to ensure continuity amidst periods of crisis. For practitioners, we highlight that stewarding firms as quasi-traditions is an underappreciated, yet critical capability.