How Could the Use of Ethnography, Participant Observation and Narrative Analysis Contribute to the Study and Understanding of Family Enterprises

Abstract

This article is part of an ongoing international research project conducted by MBC Management Business Consultants on family enterprises in different countries and cultural contexts. The objective of this research project is to find out through the use of ethnography, participant observation and narrative analysis how family business culture influences the interpretation that family enterprises have of opportunity discovery, risk taking and business planning in determining their business success. This article discusses how the use of ethnography, participant observation and narrative analysis could help entrepreneurship research conduct studies of greater multiplicity about family business reality. By resorting to participant observation entrepreneurship research could not only gather data on family enterprises but use narratives to analyse it to generate opinion variables which could help compare how family business culture in different settings, value opportunity discovery, risk taking and business planning as determinants of business success. This paper aims to provide researchers and practitioners with an alternative approach and method of studying and understanding the reality of family enterprises.