Pink Knives, Silk Ties, Virtual Pianos, Cool Shaving Brushes – Social Embeddedness, Identity and Trust of Non-Automotive German Mittelstand Family Business Successors

Inspired by Aoki’s (2007) game theoretical equilibrium view on trust as smallest institution, this ethnographic study adopts Granovetter’s (1985) interrelationship approach between social embeddedness, identity, and trust in a business environment with twenty German Mittelstand family business successors as unit of analysis.

Therefore, van Manen’s ([1997] 2015) phenomenological approach of lived experience stories was chosen as research method to extract related phenomena and themes from the respondents’ narratives. The objective of this and contribution to research lies in the identification of the formative phenomenon of Multifaceted Social

Embeddedness (MSE) emerging from its four social embeddedness cornerstones (SEC) “Family, “Region/Internationalism”, “Family Business” and to a much lesser extent “German Mittelstand”. Thematised as embeddedness subset, the five social embeddedness facets (SEF) “Fascination Essence of the Business”, “Responsibility”, “Innovation”, “Legacy” and “Roots” intertwine with and are driven by the social embeddedness lenses (SEL) “Freedom”, “Exploration”, “Commitment/ Engagement”, “Creativity“ and “Flexibility. Moreover, the narratives indicate an interconnection between Faustian Ownership of making the heirloom one’s own to possess it, MSE, SEL and SEF. Additionally, there seems to be a generational dependency of the social embeddedness in the German Mittelstand with an increasing lack thereof in generation X to Z. Moreover, no indications of  psychological ownership as discussed by Ceja and

Tàpies (2011) could be identified. 

The strong formative influence of these embeddedness themes on the development of the successor’s identity cannot be underestimated. However, in line with Barbalet

(2015), trust was not and could not be transferred together with the succession as it needed to be earned through subsequent successor action.