Institutional work in family businesses

Implementing governance structures in family firms imply change and transformation in the nature of the dynamics of decision making and the way individuals related to each other. And this transcendental change is usually driven by key actors involved in the process, something which we usually don't understand. In other words, we do not understand the role of actors' motives actions, and decisions in influencing this transformation, despite the fact that these actors will determine what and how they develop such structures. The aim of this paper, therefore is to understand how family members engage in this process. Drawing on institutional work we shed light on how actors develop and change governance structures in family businesses. By means of a qualitative study we build our analysis on three Spanish family businesses who have been in the process of developing their governance structures, where we clearly observe how the institutional champion engages in institutional work with other family members who jointly co-construct the meaning and institutionalize their governance structures. We observe how their motives, actions and decisions influence this process.