A typology of next generation employment preferences in family businesses RICHARD TELLING A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Sheffield Hallam University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Business-owning parents face the decision of whether to involve their own children in the family business. Employing family members for little or no wages is widely documented in the hospitality and tourism industries, though children’s role in such businesses is often missing from the literature. This article seeks to address this gap by exploring parental motives for involving children in the family business and the impact of such decisions on parent–child relationships in later life. The article adopts a multi-generational approach, comparing both parent’s and children’s accounts of adolescent work performed at the family business. The research findings are based on semi-structured interviews with nineteen individuals across five restaurant-owning families. The article concludes that parental motives for adolescent work are a composition of convenience, economic gain and an attempt to educate the next generation. We further argue that adolescent work serves as an ‘imprinting’ mechanism and demonstrate that children perceive their family business involvement to be a purely economic endeavour when their parents neglect to practise imprinting. The research findings indicate that when this happens, offspring recall their adolescent work experience negatively and it is detrimental to parent–child relationships. The originality of the article stems from the research findings which are based on interviews among adults who recalled their past experiences of adolescent work, thus allowing the longer lasting impact of adolescent work on parent–child relationships to be explored, whereas previous work adopting a similar focus has been conducted among adolescents.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to critically explore the linkage between adolescent work, parent–child relationships and offspring career choice outcomes in a family business context. It examines the aforementioned in light of the stay/go decision faced by adolescent family members.Design/methodology/approachFindings are derived from semi-structured interviews with 15 individuals from five Italian families operating family catering businesses in Yorkshire (UK). The approach represents a sample spanning four generations, designed to capture data from individuals who had experienced adolescent work at the family business.FindingsThe findings offer evidence that the “familiarity” of family business impacts on offspring career choices, providing a safety net or a trap which can impede exit decisions. Returning after periods of study leave that represent the transition from adolescence to adulthood, offspring continue to use the family business as a base from which to explore their career options. Alternatively, when parent–child relationships break down, family business escape strategies assume priority for offspring.Research limitations/implicationsThe study focussed exclusively on migrant Italian families within the catering sector. The sample included different generational representations among the five families. It lays the ground for future research of a similar nature among other family business ethnicities and across other economic sectors.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to understanding offspring career choice outcomes in a family business context. The empirical evidence suggests that parent–child relationships are instrumental to understanding the stay/go decision as well as previous stages of the socialisation process of embedding in the family business.