Who Do You Think You Are? Who Do They Think You Are? The Golden Cage and the Silver Spoon

Drawing on social representation theory, this chapter highlights the cultural anchoring of the role of successors in our countries. Based on the empirical analysis of French Bandes Dessinées (comics) and French press discourse, we reveal the content of the social representation of successors in the French culture by focusing on its distinct prearranged role expectations and constraints. We argue that family business successors are somehow prisoners of an invisible “golden cage.” A “cage” co-constructed by the society, the family, and the family business: everyone expects successors to be and to behave in a certain way to conform to particular implicit rules and expectations. When we talk about successors in our cultures, we thus actually think about them as “heirs,” a constraining and limited social role. Why not start to talk about successors differently, as “next generation entrepreneurs”? This new label may dramatically change the way we see them and the way successors see themselves. This would also require successors to engage in a new liminal process, a new “rite de passage” that would enable them to become entrepreneurs by actively engaging with the practice of entrepreneurship within or outside the family firm.