The balance that sustains benedictines: family entrepreneurship across generations

The heart of family business and family entrepreneurship is the family. Challenging our current understanding of what constitutes a family is important to advance the emerging field of family entrepreneurship. In this conceptual paper, we expand previous research focus with a transactional approach to family and explore family entrepreneurship across generations using the context of Benedictine organizations. The monastic family, defined from the transactional point of view, represents approximately 1,500 years of family history and entrepreneurial activities. Considering an extraordinary example of Benedictines and integrating literature from organizational behaviour, psychology, family science, family business and family entrepreneurship, we investigate the transactional family influence on development and maintenance of resilience capacity (i.e. resiliency) at organizational, family and individual levels. In particular, we develop a theoretical model conceptualizing how values and behavioural guidelines communicated through a code of ethics influences resiliency of (1) family firms through development of a long-term orientation, (2) families through maintenance of a balanced family type, and (3) individuals through enhancement of an individual work-nonwork balance. Finally, we discuss theoretical and practical implications.