Thoughts and reasoning in family businesses : Founders thoughts and reasoning behind decisionsduring the expansion phase in a first generation family business with few owners

Abstract: This thesis focuses on the decision making in the most common business form: family businesses. A well-established theoretical model within the family business field is The three circle-model, which is based on three different dimensions: family, ownership and business. Most of the family businesses stay small but the ones expanding face the dilemma of balancing the best development of the dimensions. However, these three dimensions can contradict each other and as a result the founders are forced to choose which of the dimensions to prioritize when taking decisions.The purpose of this thesis is to create an understanding of how the family, the ownership and the business dimensions affect founders thoughts and reasoning behind decisions in the expansion phase in first generation family firms with few owners.We have reached the conclusions with a qualitative approach using case studies. We have gathered the empirical data by using Life story and Critical incident to define expansion decisions in two companies. Furthermore we used semi-structured interviews with the aim of creating an understanding of the founders thoughts and reasoning behind the taken decisions.Our conclusion shows that business opportunities and the objective to remain in control of the family business highly influence the decision making during the expansion phase. Another conclusion is that the family has been affected far more by the decisions than it has had an impact on the decisions. The thesis gives insight about an area within the family business field, which previously has been neglected by researchers.