This article discusses the bonds between subject and organization that characterize the permanence or not of individuals appointed as successors in a family business, based on the analysis of the interrelated categories of subjectivity and power. This gave rise to qualitative research focused on the life stories of a family enterprise founder's three children. We used discourse analysis for the treatment of data to identify the respondents' discursive strategies in their testimonies. They were grouped into two discursive categories: life stories about work and life stories about the family. In the first category, starting from the founding hero myth, the story about the work is romanticized. Through primary socialization there is a process that hides control by the insertion of the father's values in the early entry of his male children into the family business. About the family, the statements suggest that the company is a continuation of the family as the family ties are extended to the business. The company links the children to their father's legacy symbolically and emotionally, thus making business a life project appropriated and replenished by the children. Conclusions show that family businesses are essentially economic enterprises despite being full of intense affectivity display. Children are victims of the same stratagems that several authors criticize in capitalist business as they adhere to a dream that does not belong to them but that they must keep alive.
Power relations; Attachment; Subjectivity; Family business
