Value Sets of Business-owning Families: An Indigenous African Perspective

While the literature highlights the important role played by family values in family businesses, knowledge on the nature of these values is limited or close to non-existent from certain perspectives, notably an indigenous African family business perspective. Therefore, utilizing seven indigenous Black South African family businesses as case studies, our study seeks to identify the family value sets in the business-owning families using a qualitative design. The findings show that these families uphold and teach the next-generation (NextGen) four family value sets, namely moral and ethical, economic, spiritual and religious, and cultural values. The NextGen is expected to use these value sets as they navigate their lives in and outside the family. Our study contributes to theory by identifying, developing and providing detailed insights into the nature of family values from an indigenous Black South African business-owning family perspective, and our value classification framework potentially provides other researchers with a theoretical foundation to conduct further research. Business-owning families should uphold value sets that accommodate the needs of individual family members, entire business-owning families, and their respective cultures. We also believe that non-indigenous businesses need to understand the family value sets upheld by indigenous Black African businesses to engage with them appropriately and improve business relationships.