families in Finland
Saija Katila
their cultural communities enables us to highlight what kind of rights and obliga- tions are ascribed to different family members within a community and how these rights and obligations influence the ways families do business. The cultur- ally specific ways of doing business can be seen to reflect the specific moral order of the group concerned. Moral order refers to the norms and values of a partic- ular community (Harré, 1983).
Individuals belong to several communities simultaneously and the moral orders of these communities can either support or contradict each other. In order to look at business families from the point of view of the moral order we have, however, to distinguish which moral order has the most significant influence on the business activities of the family, be it ethnicity, locality or something else. This chapter looks at business families within one occupational community, namely, farmers in Finland. Farmers are the most homogeneous group in Finland with respect to social background and economic standing (Alestalo, 1985: 125–34).
Farmers are an interesting group, especially with respect to family business studies as farming in Finland (i.e. Suomen maatalous ja maaseutuelinkeinot 1999/2000) and in Europe is mainly organised into familial units (Eurostat, 1995). Farmers are, however, usually excluded from small business analyses regardless of the fact that they are an important element of the small-business- owning population. It is not widely acknowledged that farmers these days are often portfolio founders operating in more than one industrial field (Carter, 1998;
Carter and Rosa, 1998; Katila, 2000; Peltola, 2000).
A group-specific familial moral order can influence various aspects of busi- ness life. In this chapter, the aim is to focus on the norms and values that regulate labour use in Finnish farm business families. It has been noted that in micro- businesses rendering family labour for the family business is a matter of business survival (e.g. Scase and Goffee, 1982; Wheelock, 1992). The chapter argues, however, that the picture is more complex and contested. Business survival is not sufficient to explain such a phenomenon. Using an ethnographic approach, this chapter explores in detail how the norm of unpaid family labour is acted out at the level of farms in Finland.
The first section discusses families as collectives with specific moral orders rising out of the cultural setting in which they are situated. Here, the role of emotions in moral orders is also addressed. The second section outlines the methodological choices of the study. The third section highlights the role of the norm of unpaid family labour in the system of norms and values comprising the yeoman moral order in Finland using evidence from an ethnographic study of five farm business families. Finally, the fourth section concludes by examining the role of emotions in stabilising the moral order.
Business families as carriers of group-specific moral orders
The image of economic man as a rational, self-interested individual encour- ages us to accept that people make individual and autonomous decisions about
business start-up, growth, etc. In reality, this is seldom the case. People do not make ‘individual’ decisions but rather decisions within the context set by various collectives (Etzioni, 1988: 4). Therefore, social collectives such as ethnic and racial groups, peer groups at work and neighbourhood groups are the prime decision-making units. To a significant extent, individual decision-making often reflects collective attributes and processes. Thus, as a member of a business family, it is difficult to think of the economic implications of one’s business deci- sions. Instead, one is also forced to consider the social, moral (see Etzioni, 1988;
Granovetter, 1985) and emotional implications of decisions. The decisions to support one’s community are based not on narrow self-interest but rather on internalised ethics of conduct and norms of reciprocity (Fukuyama, 1995: 9). In a collective, the social context is, to a significant extent, perceived as a legitimate and integral part of one’s existence. One has a sense of shared identity and commitment to live up to the moral order of the community (Etzioni, 1988: 5).
For example, a member of an Amish community would not open a disco as it would be against her/his collective norms and values.
A moral order refers to the norms and values of a particular community.
Each action is publicly marked with respect or contempt. Actions, whatever their practical aim, are treated as displays of character in accordance with local understandings of acceptable and context-appropriate personae. In the moral psychology of personal being, one’s actions count not for themselves but for what they reveal about individual character in regard to the communities’ moral order. The standing of a person depends in part on the degree to which she/he is capable of fulfilling commitments. It is important to understand that honour can be besmirched not only by one’s own actions but also by the actions of a family member that dishonour the whole family (Harré, 1983: 245). A moral order defines what is valuable in a community, worth striving for, and what the basic principles are according to which one is expected to behave (Ylijoki, 1998).
A moral order does not, however, causally determine the actions of community members. It could rather be seen as a loose frame within which community members reflect upon their decisions and actions. Moral orders are ambivalent in nature – they can both support and restrict the actions of community members, depending on the context.
Ram’s study (1994a) on the Asian-dominated clothing industry in the West Midlands is a good example of the existence of a specific moral order. His study makes a case for the extensive use of family labour and the two sets of moral orders that apply to family members and non-members (ibid.: 63). The emer- gence of family/non-family moral orders is usually judged as emotional and non-rational, something that endangers the survival of family businesses (Levinson, 1971; Alcorn, 1982; Kets de Vries, 1996). Hence, it is often argued that family moralities and emotions should be kept separate from the business as they are seen to represent contradictory moral orders, for example ‘What is right in the corporation is not what’s right in a man’s home or in his church. What is right in the corporation is what the guy above wants from you. That’s what morality is in the corporation’ (Jackall, 1988: 109, quoting Fineman, 1997: 552).
In a family business, however, home and corporation are intertwined. The private enters the public in ways that make standard explanations of organisa- tional reality problematic. Emotions play a crucial part in understanding organisations in general and family businesses in particular.
To enhance our understanding of how emotions influence business families and their decision-making, it is important to go beyond individual emotional expressions. Emotions are the personal displays of affected states like joy, love, sadness, shame or guilt. They are, however, only partly individual. They acquire their meaning from the cultural context – national, local and organisational (Ratner, 1989; Lutz and White, 1986, quoting Fineman, 1997: 546; Fineman, 1993). They also transmit the collective subjectivity of groups of individuals, reveal cultural rules and touch upon issues that characterise humans in general (Ruth and Vilkko, 1996).
Emotional displays are also subject to rules and conventions. They are embedded in culturally specific moral orders and normative systems that allow for assessments of the correctness or impropriety of emotions within the group (Averill, 1985; Armon-Jones, 1986; Harré, 1986; Crawford et al., 1992; Oatley, 1993; Harré and Parrot, 1996; Landman, 1996). Different commitments reflect different emotional contracts – with others and with self – and this determines the commitment’s potency (Pfeffer, 1982, quoting Fineman, 1997: 551). The emotions of shame and guilt are inherently connected to all moral orders (Harré, 1983;
Etzioni, 1988).
Looking at business families from the point of view of a moral order, guilt and shame become relevant emotions in understanding how business families operate. Guilt and shame are not, however, emotions that would be typical to family businesses only; instead they are central to the nature of organisational order in general. They are the sources of self-regulation that social organisations require to function. These emotions are nurtured in the processes of socialisation in a nation’s culture and fine-tuned in specific work organisation (Fineman, 1997: 551) and family. When thinking of family it is, however, rather difficult to dismiss the emotion of love altogether. Love refers in the broadest sense to the principle(s) by which people organise their relationships with one another (Averill, 1985: 191). The norms and values of the yeoman moral order in Finland and the emotions supporting it are explored in the following section.
Study design
A study of five farm business families was conducted. All of the five families had received rural investment support from 1987 through 1989 to start new busi- nesses outside the subsidised agricultural sector, although at that time they all were also engaged in farming. All the businesses under study were micro enter- prises. The businesses merely created self-employment. An attempt was made to maximise the variability between the cases (see Hammersley, 1992) according to how much the families used the farmer’s skills and the farm’s resources and how much they needed new skills and new resources. The cases vary from a farm
where the entrepreneurs mainly continue farming-like activities by diversifying on land (organic farming, strawberry production) to a farm where the new activi- ties do not have anything to do with the farmer’s skills and the farm’s resources (veterinarian clinic, carpenter shop).
Diversifying in new sectors or industries is not a new phenomenon in the agri- cultural sector in Finland (Siiskonen, 1990; Sireni, 1994; Peltola, 2000) nor elsewhere in Europe (Campagneet al., 1990; Fuller, 1990; Reiset al., 1990; Ilbery, 1991; Evans and Ilbery, 1992; Hill, 1993; Carter, 1998). It seems, however, that farmers do not diversify to be able to grow but rather to be able to continue farming (Ilbery, 1991; Haugen and Vartdal, 1994; Katila, 2000; Peltola, 2000).
The farm business families under study are therefore seen as representatives of the farming community. It could be argued that the new businesses are founded within the existing web of social and emotional relations and cultural codes.
The study adopts an ethnographic approach (see Spradley, 1980; van Maanen, 1988, 1995) and draws upon two main sources of data: interview mate- rial and field notes. The data were collected by living for one full week with each of the five farm business families – observing the activities, participating in them and interviewing different family members. A biographical interview technique was chosen for the study. It was crucial in making visible the moral order and the emotions supporting it that frame the actions of the members of the farm busi- ness families. When people tell who they are, what they are striving for, and what is meaningful for them in their lives (Ruth and Kenyon, 1996), they also explain the generally accepted rules of the society in which they are living (Bruner, 1990). Reminiscing about life events triggers emotions that are relived and re- experienced (Cohen, 1993). Self-reflexive judgements are especially sensitive to emotions where narrators’ self-esteem and their beliefs about their abilities are concerned (Singer and Salovey, 1993). In biographies episodes of practical activity integrate moral and ethical motives (Polkinghorne, 1991). The interviews highlighted the subjective interpretations, reinterpretations and the individual meaning-giving process of life experiences of growing up on the farm. In biog- raphy, a personal story merges with collective memory and makes visible the complicated inter-generational influence of the family (Thompson, 1993: 15).
Using the biographies of different family members and the field notes collected during the participant observation period, narratives were constructed of each of the five families under study. As the narratives are too long to present here, extracts of only one narrative are presented to highlight the arguments made. Parts of the extracts are in italics to indicate a direct quotation from the actor in question. The extracts used in this chapter describe the life and experi- ences of Kari (42 years old) and his wife Jaana (44 years old) and their two children Tero (their 14-year-old son) and Liisa (their 12-year-old daughter). Kari has continued to work his family farm and has built a new house for his family next to the house where he was born. His older brother and father still live in a nearby house. Three of Kari’s brothers and his two sisters left the farm decades ago as young adults.