Year
2021
Abstract
This article analyses a very usual metaphor, especially in French : referring to a company that controls another one as a “mother” or “parent” company, the one that is controlled as its “daughter” (subsidiary), and thus thinking of their relationships in terms of kinship and treating all the entities constituting a corporate group as a “family”. This metaphor is not simply a convenient way of talking about corporations, but more fundamentally a key concept and a coordination tool to ensure the intelligibility and proper functioning of groups that are a particularly sophisticated type of organisation compared to an integrated firm or to independent firms connected by market relations.
BOUTHINON-DUMAS, H. (2021). La métaphore familiale appliquée aux entreprises organisées en groupes de sociétés. Revue Française de Gestion, 2021/8(301), pp. 77-91.