Moving from Generation to Generation: Latin American Family Business is a Tamara-Land

Abstract

This article indagates the story of three generations of Latino entrepreneurs –grandmother, mother, and son—with family businesses that flank both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Across generations the "Tamara-Land" effect exists. To disambiguate, the narratives of these family businesses changed across generations, morphing from stories of effectuation to ones of causation. The grandmother living in Mexico embodied effectuation by "falling into" her entrepreneurial opportunities. Her story is one of necessity entrepreneurship because other opportunities were unavailable to her. The daughter in the story exhibits a mix of planning and improvisation. Although the daughter had a latent desire to pursue entrepreneurship, it became a viable option to earn a livelihood that reflected her intellectual interests. In the final series of vignettes, we find the grandson pursuing entrepreneurship in order to achieve his dream. Across generations, the entrepreneurs shift from characters in a grand narrative to becoming authors of their own story. This paper will be of interest to researchers of family business, particularly in Latin American and Latino Entrepreneurship, students of entrepreneurship, and scholars of storytelling.