Brazilian Companies and Business Groups from a Historical Perspective

Evolution of Family Business. Continuity and Change in Latin America and Spain.

Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

Año: 2016; p. 1 - 286

According to Dalla Costa (2009), family businesses represent around 90% of economic entities in Brazil. The Melhores e Maiores report from the journal Exame (2010) indicates that of the large corporations that are active in this country, more than 50% are family businesses . Nevertheless, this business structure has a reduced survival rate in the long term. According to the consultants Hoft, only 33% of the mentioned entities reached the second generation and only 4% the fourth (Amorim 2012,85). That said, it is important to study the evolution of the principal Brazilian family businesses in the 20th century, in an attempt to identify and understand the actions and strategies that allowed them to survive over time. In this sense, we will try to present a broad vision of these institutions through an analysis of the most representative firms in the periods in question. In the available literature there is no concensus on the most precise concept of family business; as underlined by Dalla Costa (2009) and Chua et al. (1999), there are multiple and various definitions for this type of productive unit. The concept developed by Chua et al. (1999) is the one best suited to the aims of the authors: it describes the objects of study as organizations founded on a coalition of one or more families with the intention of ensuring that the company be managed according to a shared vision. Thus, a family company is one in which the management structure allows the values of the family groups to be perpetuated over time and across generations. It can be seen that this evaluation comes close to that suggested by Dalla Costa (2009, 26), who says: "the family business is created by the entrepreneurial spirit of one (or various) founders, its majority capital and control is in the hands of a single (or a few) family/families and there is a reciprocal influence from entrepreneurial and family systems, regardless whether management is in the first generation or the subsequent".These clarifications made, the aim of this work consists in presenting an analysis of Brazilian family businesses in the historical context of the country's economy in the 20th and 21st centuries. It is clear that with such a broad and diverse time span, there will be particular aspects of each firm and of the economy in each period that cannot be covered in detail. Nevertheless, it is hoped that the text will be a useful point of departure for future research. The classification of the family businesses came from the ranking of Maiores e Melhores from the journal Exame, based on the criteria of turnover, with the exception of the interval 1890-1930 when the list was configured taking as parameter the criteria of founding of business, supported in the best-known literature of research for that time, such as Marcovith (2005, 2006, 2007); Dean (1976); Suzigan (1986) and Silva (1976). The analysis focuses on four important periods. The first begins on the symbolic date of the Proclamation of the Republic, 1889, and ends with the Revolution of 1930. The second features industrialization through substitution of imports, between 1930 and 1960. The third seeks to understand the role of the multinationals, State-owned and national private companies (in this case the majority were family-owned) in the period denominated milagre brasilero (Brazilian miracle) and during the big crisis of the 1980s. Lastly, the fourth incorporates the Brazilian economy and its family businesses since the start of the new millennium. In conclusion there will be some reflections, challenges and suggestions of new studies to be undertaken, as well as details of references used.