Family Business Governance: The Enterprise as a Household

Abstract

The article examines family governance among small businesses drawing on the ethnography of entrepreneurs and business families in a Russian town. The study of informal mechanisms of family governance allows us to understand how the subjects of management and control legitimize the existing division of labor in the enterprise and what social and cultural meanings stand behind such a distinction. The study demonstrates that enterprises where a married couple is involved in management, control and ownership are built on the principles of household management, in which the division of labor between spouses often recreates the desired gender order such that the ideology of successful masculinity and a “feeling of being an owner” coexist with the ideals of successful motherhood and familism.