Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to explore the consequences for family businesses and the owning families, when the owners decide to give up the family connection in the name of the business. In family firms, the owner family is often very openly and visibly connected to the firm. This close interconnectedness of family and business is often seen as source for both strength and weaknesses of family businesses (Brunninge, 2017; Tagiuri & Davis, 1996).

Moreover, recent research has identified the past as a source for value (Balmer, 2011; Urde, Greyser & Balmer, 2007). Even family firms can draw on their history, developing their heritage (Blombäck & Brunninge, 2013). Connecting family heritage to the heritage of the firm involves opportunities from a branding perspective, but it also includes risk as the family and its members are exposed to more attention from external audiences (Brunninge, 2017).

Therefore, an interesting question arises, concerning what happens when a business gives up branding itself as a family business. How is identity affected, when the family brand is replaced by a brand not alluding to family ownership? To what extent does this imply that the ties with the firm’s and the family’s heritage are cut?

Design/Methodology/Approach: This study follows a case study approach. The focal company is a third generation family business, started in 1951. The company acquired another firm in 2011. In 2016, the owners decided to give up the traditional family brand and only use the brand of the acquired firm for their operations. The case study draws on interviews with representatives of both companies as well as archival study of both.

Findings: The data collection for the study is still in progress. We expect the findings to show to what extent elements of family heritage and corporate heritage survive the decision to give up the family name in a family business and how members of the owning family

Practical implications: Family businesses stand for the majority of companies in the industrialized world. Connecting family heritage and corporate heritage implies opportunities as well as risks. The paper sheds light on issues that family business owners need to be aware of when deciding about connecting or disconnecting the heritage of the family and that of the firm.

Originality/value: Family business research with connections to marketing, branding or more specifically corporate heritage topics is still scarce. Our paper contributes to family business research by showing how connections of corporate and family heritage can be managed and what dropping the family connection in the name implies for the opportunities to leverage corporate and/or family heritage.

Our purpose is to understand the process of ‘going private’ decisions in family firms by applying a socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective, specified in the following research questions: how do socioemotional wealth considerations influence owning families’ decisions to delist their publicly-listed companies? How do socioemotional wealth considerations change after the delisting of a firm? Based on case studies of two family firms, we elaborate upon the balancing of socioemotional and financial wealth considerations by the family owners, the assessment of which changes over time. Ultimately, we propose that the experiences from being listed can lead to the reevaluation of financial, as well as socioemotional, wealth considerations. By delisting, the companies reclaim independence and control, and the identity as a private family-owned firm becomes once again pronounced. We develop the SEW-perspective by viewing the decision to delist as a mixed gamble, in that owning families have to weigh personal and financial losses against SEW gains, thereby indicating how SEW-considerations change over time. We find that owning families are willing to sacrifice current SEW, accepting current financial losses for prospective increased SEW. Additionally, in this study we extend the argument that decisions to leave the stock market are tradeoffs between competing factors.

This dissertation is about organizational identity construction with a dualities perspective. By taking a dualities perspective the focus shifts from assuming that organizational identity actually is in place towards organizational identity construction where identities are socially constructed. A dualities perspective is very suitable for studying family business where family and business are seen as interdependent and interconnected forming a duality. Family business is an identity statement. Family business identities are constructed by stakeholders by managing a set of dualities. Dualities cause tensions because of the dual poles. These tensions need to be balanced in order to draw on both poles and maintain the family business identities.

In an empirical study of two media organizations dualities of informality/formality, independence-dependence, historic paths-new paths, and commercial-journalistic are used to understand how stakeholders balance the tensions in these dualities and thereby construct organizational identities. The study reveals the central role of owning family members in organizational identity construction. It is important to balance interests between owning family members and generations. Otherwise it is possible that tensions develop between owners which can endanger the organization.

The dualities perspective broadens studies on organizational identity construction as it accounts for the peculiarities of family businesses. I argue that these dualities are basis for constructing organizational identities that require stakeholders to work with managing the inherent tensions in the dualities. This means that owning family members and organizational members are continuously involved in constructing organizational identities when managing the dualities.

For the organizational identity literature, the study offers a focus on the processes of organizational identity construction in the most common business organization, i.e. family businesses. Owning families play an eminent role in processes of organizational identity construction which future research should consider. Owning family members can initiate or trigger organizational identity construction processes because they are considered as role models by other stakeholders.

Based on my findings I recommend owning families to consider that being a family business is an identity statement implying that other stakeholders will consider them as role model whether they like it or not. Therefore owning family members should devote attention to manage dualities and balance inherent tensions. Then being a family business can be advantageous because they can draw on both family and business dimensions.