“Interpreneurship” Organisational (re)emergence and entrepreneurial development in a second‐generation family firm

Although there has been some attention to how notions of entrepreneurship and family intersect in the life of family businesses, analysis of these issues in relation to inter‐generational and organisational emergence in small family firms is underdeveloped. In order to redress this imbalance, it is important to undertake analysis of entrepreneurial issues alongside those of family, ownership, management and inter‐generational emergence. A fourth entrepreneurial axis is added to Gersick's developmental life cycle framework to facilitate this. This is then applied to aid interpretive analysis of two second generation owner‐managers and sons‐in‐law of the original founders of a small manufacturing company in the UK. Working with his younger brother‐in‐law, the two family members are responsible for taking a small steeplejack company into its third generation and a new electrical engineering market. As the younger brother‐in‐law takes on an entrepreneurial role within the company and endeavours to develop new opportunities, the chairman gives an account of the struggles involved in achieving a balance between ownership, management and family tensions. The notion of “interpreneurship” whereby family members are interacting and creating new possibilities for themselves, their lives, their organizations whilst drawing upon past events, happenings, experiences and conversations that have gone before, is also considered.