Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to comprehend the construction of entrepreneurial practices in family businesses. In order to do so, we studied four family businesses from the cachaça industry through a qualitative multicase study. We observed that entrepreneurial practices of organization creation, of opportunities’ identification and exploration, of production and commercialization, and of innovation, contributed alltogheter for these businesses’ evolution, competitivity and survival. Therefore, we consider the approach of entrepreneurship through entrepreneurial practices may constitute an alternative for the development of the field, contributing to a more comprehensive analysis of entrepreneurial phenomena in general, and of family businesses in particular.
Keywords:entrepreneurshipentrepreneurship,entrepreneurial processentrepreneurial process,entrepreneurial practicesentrepreneurial practices,entrepreneuringentrepreneuring,cachaçacachaça.
Resumo: O objetivo deste trabalho consistiu em compreender a construção de práticas empreendedoras em empresas familiares. Para tanto, foram estudadas, com base em um estudo qualitativo de casos múltiplos, quatro organizações familiares que atuam no setor de produção de cachaça artesanal. Verificou-se que as práticas empreendedoras de criação de organizações, de construção, identificação e exploração de oportunidades, de produção e comercialização, e de inovação, quando analisadas em conjunto, contribuíram para a evolução, competitividade e sobrevivência dessas empresas. Diante disso, considera-se que a abordagem do empreendedorismo pela via das práticas empreendedoras pode constituir uma alternativa para o desenvolvimento de estudos e pesquisas, e contribuir para uma análise mais compreensiva do fenômeno empreendedor em geral, e de empresas familiares em particular.
Palavras-chave: empreendedorismo, processo empreendedor, práticas empreendedoras, entrepreneuring, cachaça.
Resumen: El objetivo de este trabajo fue comprender la construcción de prácticas emprendedoras en empresas familiares. Para ello, estudiamos cuatro organizaciones familiares que trabajan en el sector de producción artesanal de cachaça, a partir de un estudio de caso múltiple cualitativo. Observamos que, al analizarlas en conjunto, las prácticas emprendedoras de creación de organizaciones, construcción, identificación y exploración de oportunidades, producción y comercialización, y innovación, contribuyeron a la evolución, competitividad y supervivencia de estas empresas. Por tanto, se considera que el abordaje del emprendimiento a través de prácticas emprendedoras puede ser una alternativa para el desarrollo de estudios e investigaciones, y contribuir a un análisis más integral del fenómeno emprendedor en general, y de la empresa familiar en particular.
Palabras clave: emprendimiento, proceso emprendedor, prácticas emprendedoras, entrepreneuring, cachaça.
The construction of entrepreneurial practices in family businesses: A study in the cachaça industry
A construção de práticas empreendedoras em empresas familiares: Um estudo no setor de cachaça artesanal
La construcción de práticas empresariales en empresas familiares: Un estúdio en el sector de cachaça artesanal
Universidade Federal do Ceará
Esta obra está bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial 4.0 Internacional.
Recepción: 30 Noviembre 2020
Aprobación: 15 Diciembre 2020
Publicación: 22 Febrero 2021
Entrepreneurship has been an object of growing interest. It is a phenomenon of a particular nature and working logic, marked by a series of actions and interventions in the economic and social context. Therefore, entrepreneurship has come to be studied and problematized scientifically, mainly due to its dynamic nature, its repercussions, and the specificities linked to its manifestation (Lopes & Lima, 2019; Wiklund, Wright & Zahra, 2019).
Based on this scenario, the apprehension of the entrepreneurship phenomenon is delimited, from a scientific point of view, by a broad set of theoretical and methodological approaches, and influenced by ontological and epistemological orientations that underpin the formation of this field of research (Borges, Lima & Brito, 2017; Clark & Harisson, 2019). From this, diverse possibilities are opened for research on this phenomenon, shedding light on elements such as business creation, the profile and behavior of the individual entrepreneur, the configuration of entrepreneurial processes for identifying and exploring opportunities, intra-entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial action and innovation (Shepherd, Souitaris & Gruber, 2020).
Thus, by putting this plural and multifaceted character of the field into perspective, there are fruitful spaces for the emergence of possibilities and alternatives for analyzing the specificities of entrepreneurship. In this work, one of these aspects will be explored, which links the appreciation of this phenomenon from the configuration of entrepreneurial practices (Butcher, 2018; Gross & Geiger, 2017; Keating, Geiger & Mcloughlin, 2014; Sklaveniti & Steyaert, 2020), a central approach to the categorization of entrepreneurship as a practice (Claire, Lefebvre & Ronteau, 2020; Thompson, Verduijn & Gartner, 2020).
The notion of entrepreneurship as a practice reflects a movement close to those observed in other areas, such as organizational studies and strategy (Claire et al., 2020), and is based, among other possibilities, on the idea of understanding this phenomenon as the act of “undertaking entrepreneurship”, or the act of “doing business”. In line with this perspective, the characterization of entrepreneurship as a practice reflects a creative social process that materializes a business or something new, based on actions and interactions between entrepreneurs who, individually and/or collectively, organize people and resources, create, discover, identify and explore opportunities, and create and renew organizations (Johannisson, 2011). Active entrepreneurs, in this scenario, are responsible for the creation and execution of entrepreneurial practices, considered here as routine ways in which these entrepreneurs understand and describe things, using specific skills and tools to create and renew organizations (Thompson et al., 2020). Thus, these active entrepreneurs carry with them patterns of embedded behavior, but also certain routines of understanding, knowing, doing, acting and undertaking entrepreneurship.
Therefore, the discussion around entrepreneurial practices contributes to the emergence of the practical approach to entrepreneurship (Chalmers & Shaw, 2017; Sklaveniti & Steyaert, 2020), a recent theoretical-conceptual perspective in this field of studies (Claire et al., 2020). In fact, the aforementioned approach values entrepreneurial practices as a central analysis unit for understanding and explaining entrepreneurship (Sklaveniti & Steyaert, 2020), and allows for considering this phenomenon as a reflection of an entrepreneurial process of creating organizations (Gartner, 2012; Hjorth, 2014), and of a process of emergence, renewal and organizational transformation (Gartner & Brush, 2016), based on its origin in the broader notions of entrepreneuring (Steyaert, 2007; Johannisson, 2011). The term entrepreneuring (Anderson & Ronteau, 2017; Hjorth, 2014; Johannisson, 2011; Steyaert, 2007), by initially referring to the conception of the organizational entrepreneurial process, can be freely translated and reinterpreted in Portuguese as “empreender”, a verb that acts exactly by transmitting the idea of action and movement - also present in other terminologies used in organizational studies that are based on the theory of practice, such as organizing and strategizing - in contrast to the term already historically disseminated and legitimized called entrepreneurship, seen as a static noun in the same way as others such as ‘organization’ and ‘strategy’.
Based on these arguments, the following research problem arises: How do the construction of entrepreneurial practices in family business creation processes and the dynamics of evolution over time occur in these organizations? To answer this question, the general objective of this work is to understand the construction of entrepreneurial practices in family companies of the craft cachaça production sector. To do so, it seeks, specifically, to identify the entrepreneurial practices related to the business creation processes, and to identify the entrepreneurial practices directed to the organizational renewal, with emphasis on those associated with the production and commercialization processes observed in the researched companies.
In this research, four family companies producing craft cachaça were investigated, based on a qualitative study of multiple cases, located in different regions of the Minas Gerais state.This type of company, defined by the observed relevance of the influence of different generations of the family on strategic, managerial and cultural elements in the organization (Borges, Lescura & Oliveira, 2012; Holt, Pearson, Payne & Sharma, 2018; Powell & Eddleston, 2017; Sharma, 2004), has been the object of problematization and theorization in the field of entrepreneurship (Basque, Calabrò & Campopiano, 2019; Randerson, Bettinelli, Fayolle & Anderson, 2015). Therefore, this work is justified insofar as it generates additional theoretical and empirical evidence on the manifestation of entrepreneurship in family companies, which can guide and substantiate the understanding and explanation of elements inherent to the particular nature of family companies (Borges, Lima, Brito & Castro, 2016; Miller, Steier & Breton-Miller, 2016). This movement is expected to contribute to the field of studies on entrepreneurship from the analysis of entrepreneurial practices observed within family companies, considering the exploration of a theoretical framework with scientific potential for the development of new studies on this approach.
Entrepreneurship, as a phenomenon of an economic and social nature, but also of a scientific nature, can be apprehended from a variety of perspectives, which form a diversity of frames of analysis which, in turn, are marked by influences from different disciplines and currents of thought. In this context, the relevance of the academic debate on the specificities of the field of studies in entrepreneurship should be highlighted, especially since this exercise leads to the recognition, appreciation, and discussion of different paths available to researchers in the area.
In fact, there are attempts to identify the limits and boundaries of this phenomenon. In the field of research and scientific production, there is a search for the establishment of concepts or definitions for terms such as entrepreneurial and entrepeneur, for the delimitation of different types of entrepreneurship, and for the understanding of their characteristics and implications. However, there is still no consensus on the explanatory potential of terms and theoretical frameworks commonly associated with entrepreneurship (Busenitz, Plummer, Klotz, Shahzad & Rhoads, 2014; Carlsson et al., 2013; Davidsson, 2016; Grégoire et al., 2006; Landström, Harirchi & Åström, 2012; Meyer et al., 2014; Vale, 2014). In this regard, there is a need to address and discuss some of the delimiting aspects of the field of entrepreneurship, in order to subsidize the understanding of some particularities associated with this phenomenon.
Within the scope of research on the subject, contributions can be observed from the economic approach and the psychological approach, while classical conceptions on entrepreneurship and on the figure and role of the individual entrepreneur (Borges et al., 2017). According to Vale (2014), these two aspects have generated relevant repercussions, in ontological, epistemological and theoretical aspects, as well as in terms of the concentration of scientific production in the field, impacting the generation and dissemination of knowledge about this phenomenon.
However, despite the contributions of the previously mentioned strands, the debate observed in the area has been reoriented over the last few years, mainly due to the limitations of the approaches based on economics and psychology. In this scenario, the field of entrepreneurship research has undergone important transformations since 2000, with the establishment of discussions on business creation (Borges, Filion & Simard, 2010; Gartner, 2012; Hjorth, 2014), and on entrepreneurial opportunities and entrepreneurship as a process (Alvarez, Barney, McBride & Wuebker, 2017; Busenitz et al., 2014; Leyden & Link, 2015; Moroz & Hindle, 2012; Shane, 2012; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000), pointing out new research perspectives in the area.
The article by Shane and Venkataraman (2000) has been appointed as the starting point for discussions on the procedural approach to entrepreneurship (Gartner, 2012; Moroz & Hindle, 2012; Shane, 2012; Venkataraman, Sarasvathy, Dew & Forster., 2012). The conception of entrepreneurship as a process constitutes a relevant theoretical current, since it allows for the analysis of multiple instances that make up the so-called entrepreneurial process (Moroz & Hindle, 2012). According to this definition, the conception of opportunities is established as the key to the understanding and explanation of entrepreneurship and to its own conceptual delimitation (Alvarez et al., 2017; Alvarez, Barney & Anderson, 2013; Eckhardt & Shane, 2003; Shane, 2012; Short, Ketchen, Shook & Ireland, 2010; Venkataraman et al., 2012).
Other authors have sought to develop research initiatives to grasp entrepreneurship from the perspective of business creation, with special attention to the processes linked to it (Borges et al., 2010; Borges, Filion & Simard, 2013). In its work, Gartner (2012; Gartner & Brush, 2016) draws attention to the need to value the activities inherent to the creation of organizations, defining them as a kind of distinctive domain of the area. According to this vision, entrepreneurship is a structured process of creating organizations, performed over time, marked by a set of decisions and actions aimed at the materialization of the enterprise, and the very manifestation of entrepreneurship would cease as the process of opening the business was completed (Gartner, 2012; Gartner & Brush, 2016; Watson, 2013).
In the bulge of this discussion, arises the theoretical linkage of entrepreneurship to the concept of organizing. Gartner (2001) defends that the research focus on entrepreneurship should be redirected to organizing, and that the entrepreneur phenomenon would be more likely to be understood through the comprehensive study of business creation processes. In his studies, (Gartner, 2012), the author goes further by stating that the very field of entrepreneurship refers to the creation of organizations in terms of organizing (Weick, 1979), and that this concept would be appropriate for establishing the foundations and limits of this emerging approach. In this scenario, both the action of the entrepreneur and the composition of the entrepreneurial activity would carry in itself, in some way, an organizational process (organizing) of something: an environment, an opportunity, a market, a process, a technology, a group of people, a business, a behavior and an individual thinking (Gartner, 2012). Organizing, in the field of entrepreneurship, involves activities such as planning and coordinating resources, people, ideas and opportunities, as well as establishing routines, structures and systems necessary for the creation of organizations. Organizational processes, in this context, would be carried out through interactions between agents, and would be continuously reconstructed and renewed over time (Gartner & Brush, 2016; Gross & Geiger, 2017).
Gartner and Brush (2016) also point out that the concept of organizing presents relevant appeal to the field of entrepreneurship, by (re)positioning and aligning the entrepreneurial process in a perspective of creating organizations. In this regard, for Hjorth (2014), the appreciation of entrepreneurship in a procedural way contributes to an understanding of this phenomenon as the creation of organizations - not simply the creation of new businesses, but also the experimentation with new organizational forms, new practices and activities, and new purposes that make sense to the manner of organizing, in the same movement of organizational creation and renewal - that is, of building organizations over time (Gartner & Brush, 2016).
Based on these assumptions, the relationship between entrepreneurship and organizing opens the field of studies in entrepreneurship to new possibilities of theoretical construction and formation of new analysis frameworks (Hjorth, 2014). Thus, attempts are made to expand the existing visions and interpretations about the entrepreneurial phenomenon, as an organizational process that has important implications for scientific production and potential contribution to the advancement of research in the field (Gartner & Brush, 2016), especially by valuing entrepreneurship as a process of creation and renewal of organizations.
It is important to emphasize that the notion of organizing constitutes a meta-theory, that is, a basis for the development of other theories (Schatzki, 2016), including in the field of entrepreneurship itself (Hjorth, 2014). It is in this context that the concept of entrepreneuring emerges (Steyaert, 2007). This conception, by bringing with it a new way of analyzing this phenomenon, places entrepreneurship as an entrepreneurial process of creating organizations (Gartner, 2012; Hjorth, 2014) and a process of emergence, renewal and organizational transformation (Gartner & Brush, 2016), being the object of recent elaboration within the field of research.
Here, therefore, lies the central focus of this work. Based on the arguments presented so far, it seeks to explore an alternative conception for the research in entrepreneurship, from an emerging and little diffused aspect in literature, characterized as entrepreneurship as a practice. By assuming a perspective duly informed by the theory of practice, according to discussions present in the social sciences (Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 2001), in organizational studies (Bakken & Hernes, 2006; Czarniawska, 2008; Schatzki, 2016; Weick, 1979), and in the field of strategy studies (Jarzabkowsi, Balogund & Seidl, 2007; Vaara & Whittington, 2012; Whittington, 1996; 2006). Faced with this scenario, it can be affirmed that the emergence of an alternative approach to carrying out research in entrepreneurship would contribute to a movement to change the focus of research on the subject, contemplating and valuing what the entrepreneur effectively does, and not what the individual is or represents (Anderson & Ronteau, 2017; Hjorth, 2014; Johannisson, 2011), generating implications that, in turn, converge to the conception of entrepreneurship as a practice.
The conception of entrepreneurship as a practice originates from the theory of practice, a conceptual alternative proper to sociological theory that has been explored in various ways in various fields of studies and disciplines (Schatzki, 2001). The theory of practice, and its applications, is constituted as an alternative for carrying out research in the field of entrepreneurship, by contemplating and valuing what the entrepreneur does, and not what the individual is or represents (Hjorth, 2014; Steyaert, 2007). In this scenario, Johannisson (2011) defends that the use of the theory of practice implies the recognition of the role of entrepreneurship as a continuous creative organizational activity, structured through a set of (micro)activities or (micro)practices of agents who act individually and/or collectively and who guide their actions around a shared practical understanding. In this regard, the practical approach to entrepreneurship may contribute, according to the author, to the analysis of said phenomenon as a unveiling process, bringing to light a series of evidences that are generally not considered in the researches on the matter, highlighting aspects such as the local, the situated, the specific, the detailed, the discourse, the concrete, the real, the daily, the temporal aspect, and the action.
Several efforts have been directed at understanding entrepreneurship as a practice and the different possibilities for entrepreneurial practices (Claire et al., 2020; Thompson et al., 2020). These studies generally indicate that the notion of entrepreneurship as a practice can be understood as the act of undertaking (Steyaert, 2007; Johannisson, 2011), resulting from a creative social process that materializes a business or something new, based on the actions and interactions between entrepreneurs who organize people and resources, create, identify and exploit opportunities, and create and renew organizations (Johannisson, 2011). In this context, the individual is then analyzed in the broader plan of the activities performed by the individual (Gartner, 2012), creating and renewing practices on a daily and routine basis in a continuous process of building and rebuilding organizations over time (Antonacopoulou & Fuller, 2020).
In addition, the concept of entrepreneurship as a practice can also be understood and structured from the concepts of practice, practices and performers, applying contributions from authors such as Reckwitz (2002). In fact, entrepreneurship can be interpreted, at the same time, as a phenomenon marked by one practice and several practices. Entrepreneurship, as a practice, would be composed by a set of practices more or less disseminated and socially shared, configuring routines of creation and/or identification of opportunities, routines of business creation, routines of innovation, routines of relationship with the market, routines of relationship with public agents, routines of production, strategic routines of management, and so on, forming patterns of an entrepreneurial action. In turn, it is based on these practices that the entrepreneur, now configured as a performer, bases his practice, which consists of his effective action duly guided and informed by the practices of institutionalized entrepreneurship, in the set of activities, episodes and situations that allow the materialization of their business, companies, innovations. In this regard, the active entrepreneur starts to be seen as an agent who performs the act of undertaking entrepreneurship in their daily activities, creating and recreating entrepreneurial practices through their cognitive framework, their ideas, motivations, inspirations, intuitions, improvisation, their frame of reference and their training, their creativity and, above all, their action. In this case, by recognizing the practice and acting in an entrepreneurial way, the dynamic, temporal, transitory, provisional and changeable character of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial practices that corroborate the construction and reconstruction of organizations is revealed.
Thus, conceiving entrepreneurship as a practice can enable the understanding of the creation and reproduction of entrepreneurial practices over time, the context in which they manifest themselves, and the agents that build them (Anderson & Ronteau, 2017; De Clerq & Voronov, 2009; Sklaveniti & Steyaert, 2020). Entrepreneurial practices can be seen as a dynamic movement of creation and renewal of organizations that involves the apprehension of various categories of analysis, including: a) the practices of entrepreneurs in their daily lives and in the place where it effectively occurs; b) the pre-organizational entrepreneurial practices and processes of creation, identification and exploitation of opportunities; c) the entrepreneurial practices and processes of business creation; d) the existing processes of innovation and business renewal and; e) the context of influence of entrepreneurship, involving issues of economic, social, cultural, among others.
Given this, by exploring these and other categories of analysis, one gets the central foundations of an alternative approach to conducting research in entrepreneurship. Therefore, to recognize entrepreneurship as a practice, and to recognize the object of action of this phenomenon as an act of undertaking formed by a set of entrepreneurial practices, means to incorporate in entrepreneurship the valorization of this entrepreneurial practice as a central unit of analysis of the entrepreneurial phenomenon (Sklaveniti & Steyaert, 2020; Thompson et al, 2020, bringing in its bulge aspects that reveal the set of practices that are configured and reconfigured in the core of this act of entrepreneurship, which certainly would allow to understand this phenomenon at a level of depth and sophistication still rarely observed in investigations on the matter.
This research was guided, from a methodological point of view, by a qualitative approach (Denzin & Lincoln, 2006). The qualitative method allowed the in-depth study of four family businesses in the cachaça sector, located in the state of Minas Gerais (Stake, 2000). The criteria for selecting the cases studied were defined from four central perspectives, involving: a) the historical and/or market trajectory of the selected organizations in the sector; b) the degree of development of these enterprises, measured through the identification of competitive differentials and diverse innovations that mark the positioning of the companies in the Minas Gerais and national markets; and c) the need to understand distinct contextual realities, with emphasis on the traditional region of Salinas (north of the state), but also contemplating cases from two other regions that produce cachaça in Minas Gerais; and d) the categorization of the enterprises investigated as family businesses, observed from the interaction of different generations of the family in conducting strategic, managerial and operational activities of the business. Based on these criteria, telephone contacts were made to invite potential entrepreneurs to participate in the research, and this initial selection was based on the criteria mentioned above, and made possible through the accessibility criteria.
The data collection movement was carried out through the use of interview techniques (Fontana & Frey, 2011). The interview activity was guided by a script (Gaskell, 2010), composed of questions aimed at elucidating the following points: a) recovery of the historical trajectory of the companies studied; b) recovery of the evolution and growth of companies over time, pointing to strategic, competitive and market elements; c) recovery of the trajectory of the entrepreneurial processes that occurred and occur in these organizations, pointing to elements linked to production and marketing activities, as well as innovative processes within them; and d) recovery of entrepreneurship practices, problematizing both the processes of creation of the organizations studied and their processes of renewal, seeking to seize evidence that could be linked to the perspective of entrepreneurship as a practice.
The interviews were previously scheduled with the active entrepreneurs responsible for each one of the investigated cases, and carried out in person. The criteria to select the agents to be interviewed involved, basically, the need of obtaining information next to the actors considered as central to the studied companies, such as the founders (when possible), predecessors, successors, managers and other agents acting on the investigated companies. There were 15 interviews in total, four in Case 1, four in Case 2, four in Case 3, and three in Case 4. The interviews had an average duration of 120 minutes. The number of interviews in each company was defined based on the number of agents involved in the strategic conduction of the studied organizations and other key actors, as long as they were important to compose the corpus of empirical material collected necessary to answer the questions of this research.
The saturation criterion was used to define the number of interviews to be conducted (Fontanella, Ricas & Turato, 2008). The interviews were recorded with the help of an electronic audio recording device, in order to retrieve the narratives of the interviewees in order to guarantee the accuracy of the collected data. The content of the recordings was transcribed in its entirety in an electronic text editor, fully respecting the statements of the interviewees, to enable subsequent treatment based on the technique of narrative analysis (Rouleau, 2010), a procedure considered appropriate because it provides a framework that allows apprehension of entrepreneurship as a procedural phenomenon, by rescuing, in a more in-depth, particularized and contextualized way, stories about the trajectories of entrepreneurs and family businesses created by them (Gartner, 2007).
Given this, the aim was to identify in the narratives passages that were associated with different categories that, when put into perspective, could be interpreted as entrepreneurial practices and that would delimit themselves as narrative paths of a more central nature, involving evidence on trajectories specific to the cases studied. Thus, the analysis of narrative allowed the identification of categorizations central to the conception of entrepreneurship as a practice, including elements such as: the creation of the business, the process of creation and/or identification of opportunities, their evolution and formalization, as well as aspects related to practices of innovation, production, commercialization. This has allowed for the understanding of the entrepreneurial practices that configure entrepreneurship as a practice, consistent with the research problem, with the theoretical framework, and with the objectives of this research, giving support to the discussion of the results and arguments here presented.
Table 1 presents the categorization of the family businesses investigated, as well as the discrimination of the interviewed agents, according to each case explored during the empirical research conducted.
Cases studied and active entrepreneurs interviewed
Source: developed by the authors.
The first step for the understanding of the entrepreneurial practices involves the need of characterization and contextualization of the historical trajectory of the craft cachaça family companies. Case 1 portrays the history of a family company founded in 1922 in the city of Ituiutaba, in the "Triângulo Mineiro" region. The activity began with the founder, a pioneer of the family in the craft production of cachaças, as an informal activity. As the years went by, members of the second, third and fourth generation of the family entered the company, which reflected in an increase in sales and, consequently, in production, which remained informal for decades. In 2002, began the process of formalization of the distillery, led by the predecessor (fourth generation), with the envisioning of market opportunities to market the product in the region and for other states in Brazil. After this transition period, the formalization of the distillery occurred in 2007, through the registration at MAPA. In 2013, the store specialized in selling cachaça was inaugurated. During this period, members of the fifth generation of the family entered the business, currently reflecting a joint effort of the family in the company.
Case 2 illustrates the trajectory of a family business located in the city of Salinas, northern region of Minas Gerais state. The production of cachaça started in 1943, in the rural property of the founder. The beginning of the activities had already been marked by the pioneering of the production in that region and by the introduction of the name of the brand that later became known nationally. In this period, a strategy was defined that lasts until present days: reduced production volume, commercialization restricted to small lots, high price product, but with expressive focus on storage and aging (varying between 10 and 12 years), and with the quality of the drink. This strategy gave the brand an exclusive character, a fact that contributes to the construction of its image in the market. In 2002, the founder passed away, and the enterprise went through a process of administrative reorganization, being controlled by a family council, composed by the six children of the entrepreneur, and managed by two successors. In 2013, the management of the distillery was transferred to one of the grandsons of the founder, who became responsible for the production and management of the daily activities of the business. Besides being one of the companies responsible for the reputation of the city of Salinas as a traditional region in the production of cachaça, the beverage produced by this family business is currently a reference in its sector in Brazil, having been widely awarded in fairs and meetings of the beverage sector in the main consumer centers of the country, and with wide prominence in the rankings of the best Brazilian cachaças produced by the press.
Case 3 refers to a family company producing cachaça founded in 1973, in the city of Salinas, north of the state of Minas Gerais. The activities of the enterprise started in an informal way. After this initial period, the distillery was registered and formalized in 1974. Along the time, the company presented relative stability, with regional performance and commercialization limited to the state of Minas Gerais. Given the quality of the product, it gained recognition in the market, a fact that motivated the entrepreneur to expand the commercialization of the drink to Belo Horizonte, and later to the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo, Bahia, Goiás, and Distrito Federal. This motivated the successors to enter and make investments in planting, production facilities, quality, personnel and management, taking the distillery to a new level of productivity that transformed the once small distillery into a “craft cachaça producer on an industrial scale”, focusing on technology, quality, productivity and efficiency. The organization began to operate in practically all of Brazil and also in other countries such as the United States and the European Union, through exports, which demanded the entry of successors for the adequacy of the levels of professionalization of production and management. The family company supplies consumers with five distinct brands, with focuses that vary from the Premium segment to the most popular layers, consolidating itself as one of the leaders in the production and commercialization of craft cachaça.
Finally, Case 4 refers to a family business founded in 1985 in the city of Betim, in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte. Initially, the founder, coming from other organizations in the beverage sector, began to produce cachaça in one of his rural properties as a hobby. The production, destined to friends, family and for his own consumption, began to attract attention and, with the appreciation of this restricted public for the beverage and the emergence of a more specialized demand for the product in the market, the entrepreneur took the decision to start the formal activities of production and commercialization of cachaça. To this end, the entrepreneur sought specialized information on the production of distillates from a whisky manufacturer in the United States, and on the production of fermented beverages in Germany. The knowledge obtained helped in the structuring of the production process, adding innovations to the already traditional pattern of cachaça production, which contributed to add quality attributes that, combined with a strategy of positioning the cachaça in a premium segment, shaped a product and brand differential in the market. Currently, after a period of strong growth, and after investments in the installed production capacity and in the brand and promotion of the product, the cachaça manufactured by this company has become a reference in the domestic market, being exported to several countries and awarded several awards from institutions in the sector and from specialized press.
Thus, it is important to highlight that the joint analysis of the cases reported reveals different trajectories of creation and evolution of companies in the sector of cachaça production. These enterprises were marked by initiatives of entrepreneurs linked to rural activities and, more specifically, to the beverage sector or even to the production of cachaça. All entrepreneurs share options for the production of a craft product, focusing on quality and differentiation of the beverage, for its insertion in the market in a niche segment, aimed at a target audience that aims the consumption of a quality cachaça. Thus, it can be verified that the trajectory, the success and the image of these companies and their respective products in the market can be, at least in part, explained based on the entrepreneurial practices that have been performed over time.
In this work, the objective was to understand the construction of entrepreneurial practices in family companies producing craft cachaça. For this, both the entrepreneurial practices associated to the entrepreneurial processes of creation of the studied organizations, as well as the entrepreneurial practices turned to the renovation of these enterprises, particularizing the innovation practices present on production and commercialization processes of the beverage, were retrieved. The cases investigated allowed to contemplate the configuration of different entrepreneurial practices (Hjorth, 2014; Johannisson, 2011), from specific aspects of business creation, its evolutions, its dynamics, and its market performance. Thus, in this session, a comparative analysis based on the data and narratives presented in the previous topic will be conducted. Therefore, it is a matter of seeking to identify evidence in terms of entrepreneurial practices that allow for the highlighting of how these practices contribute to the configuration of entrepreneurship as a practice.
Specifically, it is observed that the creation of family companies producing cachaça involved, in a first moment, the manifestation of entrepreneurial processes that were, in their origin, marked by entrepreneurial practices of opportunity creation, opportunity exploration, and business creation. These practices reveal different possibilities of manifestation, since they contemplate, from the same perspective, elements associated with the creation and identification of opportunities, observed from different perspectives in the cases investigated (Table 2):
Entrepreneurial practices of family business creation
Source: research data.
The creation of craft cachaça family companies is marked by the manifestation of entrepreneurial processes that are delimited, in their origins, by creation practices and exploration of opportunities (Chalmers & Shaw, 2017; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). In case 1, the creation of the organization involved elements such as the traditional insertion of its actors in the rural environment and individual and collective initiatives to respond to market demands and the institutional environment. In case 2, the element of tradition and rural insertion was also present, but with a pioneering spirit that produces effects, including on the very creation of an already formalized business. In case 3, there is this same element of tradition and rural insertion, but based on a future perspective of market insertion in a more strategic way. In case 4, the use of previous experiences in the beverage segment, associated with the entrepreneur’s knowledge about fermentation and distillation, culminated in a business focused on a specific market niche, which combines strategic market orientation and an innovative posture.
There are, therefore, different paths and motivations that lead to the formalization and structuring of the family companies studied. Although this formalization is a legal requirement for the manufacture and marketing of cachaça, it does not present itself as an impediment to its existence in the market. Formalization, therefore, can be viewed as a point of convergence of initiatives aimed at building and identifying opportunities, from a series of entrepreneurial practices that link these opportunities to the creation of family companies in the sector (Chalmers & Shaw; 2017; Lima, 2013).
In these terms, it can be stated that aspects such as the use of previous experiences of the founders in the rural environment and/or in the manufacture of beverages, the definition of focus on the production of quality craft cachaça, the segmentation of the performance in the premium cachaça market, the characterization of production processes based on the application of differentiated methods and production technologies, and the definition of different strategies for adding value to the product, through the aging techniques of the beverage, and decisions on the scale of production and exclusivity of cachaça, among other issues, although they are configured in a first moment as elements derived from decisions and actions to formalize the family ventures studied, they can be reinterpreted as movements of construction and exploration of opportunities, inseparable elements present in the entrepreneurial process. These elements, in turn, are covered by entrepreneurial practices that contribute, to a greater or lesser degree, to the opening of family companies in the cachaça sector (Anderson & Ronteau, 2017; Gartner & Brush, 2016). Thus, entrepreneurship as a practice can be defined, at this first moment, by entrepreneurial practices that constitute the foundation of the process of creating organizations producing cachaça, validating and reinforcing the theoretical assumptions presented.
The family companies producing cachaça created in this context of creation, emergence, identification, transformation and exploration of opportunities (Gartner & Brush, 2016; Hjorth, 2014), built their internal decisions and actions from the definition and delimitation of distinct production practices. These activities are inserted in a wide context of entrepreneurial practices that are delimited by the acting of family active entrepreneurs in these businesses, being also influenced by opportunities that emerged or were produced from the construction of these organizations (Table 3):
Entrepreneurial practices of craft cachaça production
Source: research data.
The production practices observed in the family companies studied were configured from different perspectives, involving both their individual trajectories and the particularities of their organization building processes and the opportunities linked to them. In case 1, the influence of the legal framework reinforced the delimitation of innovative processes for the manufacture of the beverage, such as the production from the fermented must of molasses. In case 2, innovative production practices were structured by aligning sugarcane planting and cachaça production itself to the concept of organic production. In case 3, there was the definition of innovative practices related to a strategy of artisanal production on an industrial scale, duly organized based on technological artifacts. In case 4, the importance of innovation and technology was valued, generating practices strongly aligned with concepts such as quality of process and product, technological production of cachaça, and strategies for aging the beverage. Based on these evidences, there are ways that, although differentiated and particularized from the internal point of view, point to the same direction when analyzed from the point of view of entrepreneurial practices, because they generate repercussions on the production activities within the family business.
Thus, the craft cachaça production activities presented important evidence of association to entrepreneurship (Lima, 2013). In general, it was possible to establish the categorization of more or less similar practices in the context of the cases analyzed, which are linked to decisions and actions on the adequacy to the requirements of regulatory entities, on the structuring of productive processes defined from innovative bases, on the implementation of continuous improvements in these processes, on the definition of aging strategies, among other practices. On the other hand, some factors were identified that configure important differentiations between the cases, such as the definition of the production of cachaça through the fermented must of molasses, the option for organic production methods, the characterization of artisanal production on an industrial scale, and the adoption of technological innovations within the productive process. By involving both shared practices among the cases, and practices that manifest themselves in a particular way to each of the family companies studied, the entrepreneurial practices of production are relevant to the context of entrepreneurship as a practice, since they enable the exploration of opportunities created and/or discovered, promote the generation of competitive differentials, and allow the construction and exploitation of new business opportunities. As a consequence, there is a convergence of production practices that contribute, themselves, to the resignification of the performance of cachaça producer organizations in the market and to the sustainability of these enterprises over time, relevant facts for their perpetuation.
In a similar way, initiatives linked to the commercial and marketing performance of family businesses (Table 4) were verified, through the role of decisions and actions executed by active etrepreneurs linked to these businesses, by being responsible for directing their market practices, herein understood as entrepreneurial commercialization practices (Gross, Carson & Jones, 2014):
Entrepreneurial practices of commercialization of craft cachaça
Source: research data.
The entrepreneurial practices of commercialization reflected a range of actions that made possible the construction, delimitation and particularization of market practices of organizations that produce craft cachaça (Araujo, Kjellberg & Spencer, 2008; Kjellberg, Azimont & Reid, 2015; Kjellberg & Helgesson, 2007). In case 1, there was an orientation towards the conceptual definition of brands, packaging, products and the company’s image in the market, which included campaigns at points of sale, participation in various events, and the use of social media. Case 2 revealed an emphasis on direct marketing and on initiatives to establish the exclusivity character of the cachaça in the market, restricting its commercialization as a niche product. In case 3, it was observed a more professional orientation, with a defined focus around actions directed to sales growth and market share, use of various marketing techniques, and export of the beverage. In case 4, there is a concern with the image of the company and with the positioning of cachaça with higher income public, which includes the valorization of the experience of consumption and discursive and symbolic elements such as the conception of “terroir”, transposing institutionalized and diffused elements in wine and whisky markets into cachaça.
In view of the aforementioned, the configuration of different entrepreneurial commercialization practices is verified, with relevant and particular repercussions for each of the family companies studied. Certain practices were present in an equally important way among the cases, such as direct sale to the consumer, direct marketing, definition of strategies for market access, attempts to conceptually define the image of the business and the cachaça, the exploration of formal registration and certifications promoted by regulatory entities as initiatives for the demarcation of differentials of the product, and the establishment of actions focused on the beverage export. It was also observed the presence of very particular marketing practices within these companies. Actions such as the participation in regional events, the use of social media, the creation of myths of cachaça exclusivity, the focus on high market share, and the focus on the experience of consumption and valorization of the “terroir”, each in its own way, configured important differentials to the cases studied, conferring possibilities of conformation of (new) entrepreneurial processes, based on (new) business opportunities and structured through the individual and/or collective action of active entrepreneurs, creating new possibilities for themselves, their brands, their products, their innovations, and their companies in the market. Thus, by making possible more effective performances in the craft cachaça market, the practices performed by the various active entrepreneurs have contributed to the entry, operation, and consolidation of these companies in the sector, each with their own spaces, target audience, products, differentials, and markets. In this way, these commercialization practices, in their amplitude and specificities, delimit entrepreneurship as a practice in the studied organizations and are linked to the evidences that sustain their survival perspectives.
It should also be noted that such a finding involves a double recognition. The joint analysis of commercialization practices allows for an interpretation in the light of marketing independently, whereas market practices operate in the construction of strategies, positions, guidelines and behaviors that are proper to this area of research (Araujo et al., 2008; Kjellberg et al., 2015; Kjellberg & Helgesson, 2007). However, since resources are made to the conception of practice and its association with themes such as strategy, organizational studies, and more specifically, entrepreneurship, implications not necessarily restricted to marketing are recognized, since they reflect and reverberate in a series of opportunities, entrepreneurial processes, creation of organizations, in a multiplicity of possibilities that only emerge, at least from the analytical-conceptual point of view, from the construction of entrepreneurial practices of commercialization and market.
Finally, it was possible to see the manifestation of different innovation practices in the production and commercialization of cachaça. These innovation practices, analyzed from a new interpretation perspective, are configured as entrepreneurial practices in themselves since they manifest themselves from bases fundamentally associated with the initiatives of active entrepreneurs who seek to create and explore new business opportunities, create value, and strengthen the competitiveness of family companies (Table 5):
Practices of innovation in aspects of production and commercialization of craft cachaça
Source: research data.
The construction of innovative practices in family companies producing craft cachaça was marked by the action of active entrepreneurs, members of different generations of entrepreneurial families bound to these businesses. In each case, the analysis allows capturing the development of entrepreneurship, the undertaking, result of the action of different active entrepreneurs, agents of entrepreneurial practices. In the studied cases, the presence of particular facts is verified, which are phenomena that are constituent and constituted from the daily practice and situated from different entrepreneurs in each studied company. These are the agents that create different activities along the phases identified in each family company studied, configuring actions or daily entrepreneurial practices that generate possibilities of creation and renewal of these organizations. These entrepreneurial agents are the active entrepreneurs who implement the movement that occurs since the creation of the organizations, their emergence, driven by renewal and organizational transformation.
Thus, in case 1, it is noted an orientation more focused on radical innovations in terms of product, and more focused on incremental innovations around improvements in production processes and marketing of cachaça. In case 2, there is a more explicit definition around radical innovations which are associated with the organic production of cachaça and the construction of the cachaça market in Salinas and Minas Gerais state, and around incremental innovations that seek to add quality to the product through production control and defense/maintenance of aging and commercialization strategies. In case 3, the definition of craft production on an industrial scale is configured as a radical innovation in the sector, as well as the establishment of several strategies and marketing techniques to operate in the market. In case 4, the introduction of radical innovations associated with the development and adoption of various technologies aimed at improving the cachaça, and at controlling the quality of the beverage, is observed, at the same time as radical commercialization innovations are explored, especially through the segmentation in the premium market of cachaça. At the same time, there are also incremental innovations in terms of production and commercialization, with improvements in the production process, initiatives for certification of the beverage produced, improvements in the commercialization process, focusing on quality and continuous improvement of processes and products.
In summary, there was the definition of entrepreneurial practices that are articulated around innovations in the production and commercialization of craft cachaça. Differentiated practices were identified that configure themselves as radical innovations, observed in activities such as the process of production of cachaça through the fermented must of molasses, the process of organic production of the beverage, the craft production on an industrial scale, the adoption of innovative technologies of production, the definition of distinct strategies of aging of the beverage, the creation of new products derived from cachaça, and in initiatives such as the construction of new markets, the implementation of differentiated marketing strategies, such as the focus on experiences of consumption and dissemination of products, and the creation of new businesses linked to the original companies. It was also verified, in this context, actions that are analyzed as incremental innovations, involving the introduction of continuous improvements in various stages of the production process, the adoption of initiatives to enable certifications of the produced beverage, the definition of actions aimed at increasing the quality of the product, as well as the introduction of continuous improvements in commercialization in terms of sales and distribution, and by exploring new markets, through the entry into new regions of Brazil and resorting to the export of cachaça to markets of other countries.
Thus, the manifestation of innovation practices present in aspects of production and commercialization of cachaça in family businesses is verified. These innovative practices can be freely reinterpreted as entrepreneurial innovation practices. In other terms, these practices can be analyzed as a set of entrepreneurial practices that are configured from different types and perspectives of innovation, and that impact on decisions, actions and activities of operational and marketing nature, but without disregarding their contributions of organizational nature and, moreover, of entrepreneurial and family nature. It is, therefore, a recognition the inseparable character between entrepreneurship and innovation, in general, and between entrepreneurship and family businesses, in particular, but also a consideration of innovations themselves as entrepreneurial practices that can, yes, be analyzed from the perspective of the theory of practice and considered as one of all the central elements of entrepreneurship as a practice, in a broader perspective than that made possible, in some specific situations, by analyses associated with the concept of innovation by itself.
Therefore, the data analyzed in this work can be related to various elements present in the established theoretical framework on entrepreneurship as a practice. As previously discussed, the practical approach of entrepreneurship, by articulating, in the same perspective, a set of questions that are associated with the vision of entrepreneurship as a pre-organizational process focused on opportunities (Davidsson, 2016; Eckhardt & Shane, 2003; Shane, 2012; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000) as well as to the vision of entrepreneurship as a process of creating organizations (Gartner, 2012; Hjorth, 2014), allows the identification of processes of organization creation and innovation construction in already established organizations, through the conception of entrepreneurial practices (Anderson & Ronteau, 2017; Johannisson, 2011). It is, therefore, a theoretical and analytical resource that has proved to be adequate and potentially interesting for the understanding of phenomena that manifest themselves in the core of the action of active entrepreneurs, who structure their initiatives towards the creation of opportunities, business construction, product construction, process construction, market construction, through their practices (Gartner & Brush, 2016; Johannisson, 2011; Hjorth, 2014; Steyaert, 2007).
Given this, there is an important association between the social construction of entrepreneurial practices, the action of active entrepreneurs, and the construction of the phenomenon of entrepreneurship as a practice, in a relationship between practice, practices and performer which delimitation is taken as central to the conception of organizations from the theory of practice (Schatzki, 2001; Reckwitz, 2002; Whittington, 2006). At the same time, by understanding aspects from the action of active entrepreneurs, the structures linked to the production and commercialization of cachaça in the studied companies, and the strategies and positions before different business opportunities, the apprehension in the conception of entrepreneurship as practices of different levels of analysis - micro, meso and macro - so relevant to the context of the theoretical-analytical proposition presented not only here in this research, but also in the field of the use of the theory of practice in business administration as a whole (Vaara & Whittington, 2012; Whittington, 2006).
Consistent with the conceptual elements present in the theory of practice, and consistent with perspectives observed in organizational studies and research in strategy, the practical approach of entrepreneurship advocates the apprehension of the entrepreneurial phenomenon as a situational practice. In other terms, it seeks to recognize entrepreneurship as a practice, which definition involves a set of decisions and actions executed by active entrepreneurs by being responsible for structuring and delimiting entrepreneurial processes, creating business, creating/discovering opportunities, creating/developing innovations, and renewing companies. Thus, the focus of analysis of entrepreneurship as a practice resides in the action and execution of the entrepreneurial process of creating organizations, and in the creation, transformation and perpetuation of entrepreneurial practices bound to them.
In fact, apprehending entrepreneurship as a practice, that is, as the act of undertaking in practice and informed by a set of practices, implies in delimiting it as a phenomenon marked by its own dynamics. Initially, it is important to emphasize that the verb “to undertake” transmits, precisely, action and movement to entrepreneurship. By resorting to the notion of practice, such conception allows the understanding and explanation of elements proper to the field of entrepreneurship, but which are not necessarily explored in the scope of other approaches. Thus, aspects such as the emergence of entrepreneurial action, the dialogical relationship between the creation and the discovery of opportunities, the construction and evolution of the entrepreneurial process, the construction and perpetuation of organizations, the construction of practices of innovation, among other possibilities, contribute to a new look at the phenomenon, unveiling a series of elements that contribute, more effectively, to the delimitation of the nature and logic of entrepreneurship. There is, in this regard, all the resource and valorization of the action, of the movement, of the transformation, of the dynamics, of the fluidity, and of the processes linked to the social construction of entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship as a practice is defined as the creative and organizationally situated social process that materializes a new organization or new organizational practices, based on decisions and actions executed by active entrepreneurs who organize people and resources, who create, discover, identify, explain and explore opportunities, creating organizations through movements of business creation and renewal. The entrepreneurial practices emerge, in this scenario, as being socially and contextually situated and circumscribed to the domain of action of the active entrepreneur(s) and their organization(s), and which have repercussions in terms of daily and routine activities that are built cumulatively and collectively, and which translate into the unveiling of various innovative practices of construction and reconstruction of organizations. The action of the active entrepreneur, in this context, appears as the entrepreneurial action and the act of undertaking in practice, involving routines of understanding, knowing, acting, doing, and undertaking entrepreneurship.
Therefore, entrepreneurship, as a socially legitimized and institutionalized phenomenon, is composed of a set of entrepreneurial practices that are configured as processes and routines for creating organizations, creating and discovering opportunities, exploring opportunities, innovating, managing, producing and marketing, among others, which become patterns situated contextually of an entrepreneurial action. Thus, entrepreneurship as a practice, while being a creative organizational activity, is structured based on these practices, which inform and substantiate the action of the active entrepreneur. Therefore, based on these fundamentals, and facing the set of evidences presented until now, entrepreneurship is understood as a practice, or entrepreneurship, the set of organizational creation practices that are collectively performed by entrepreneurial agents. This set of practices, in turn, converges for the organizational renewal of enterprises over time through innovative practices inherent to the dynamics of entrepreneurship.
The construction of the theoretical approach of the research, associated with the facts and evidence observed in the craft cachaça producing organizations studied, allows to base the concept of entrepreneurship as a practice and validate the definition presented above. The thematic axes present in the narratives - creation of organizations, creation and exploration of opportunities, entrepreneurial practices of production, entrepreneurial practices of commercialization, and entrepreneurial practices of innovation - form the core of differentiated entrepreneurial processes, which contemplate, in the same perspective, the pre-organizational and organizational elements, the materialization and perpetuation of enterprises, the configuration of internal and external actions to the businesses, the decisions and actions related to productive, commercial, technological and innovative processes, and the interventions of active entrepreneurs responsible for the past, present, and future of organizations. Therefore, it is a scope that is configured from the action of active entrepreneurs when building diverse entrepreneurial practices, taking into consideration from micro activities, through processes and innovations, until reaching the context of opportunities and markets, in a broader movement of construction and reconstruction of organizations that (perhaps) could only be apprehended from this integrative, deep and comprehensive perspective, called entrepreneurship as a practice.
Entrepreneurship refers to a practice situated and problematized to the context analyzed here, but which can be theoretically extrapolated to other particular facts and situations. With this, the act of undertaking entrepreneurship, consistent with the aspects advocated within this embryonic theory of entrepreneurship as a practice, reflects in itself all the vigor and potential of the practical approach of entrepreneurship, since it allows the understanding of entrepreneurial processes of construction and evolution of organizations. It is about, in this scenario, a phenomenon that is marked by the action of active entrepreneurs who envision, in their individual and collective initiatives, the configuration of a set of practices that are adjectivized as entrepreneurial based on their most fundamental aspects, because they enable the creation of business, of innovative products and processes from their entrepreneurial interventions in practice. Additionally, it should be highlighted that these active entrepreneurs, when acting in an entrepreneurial way, resignify the whole trajectory of organizations, which become the object and manifestation space of these entrepreneurial practices, in a more specific way, and of entrepreneurship as a practice, in a wider way.
Therefore, based on these discussions, it can be stated that the elements discussed here are supported from the theoretical point of view, and confirmed empirically from the narratives present in the cases investigated and the analyses constructed in this work. It is defended here the importance of the practical approach of entrepreneurship, of the concepts of entrepreneurship as a practice, of undertaking entrepreneurship (entrepreneuring), and of entrepreneurial practices, as one among so many alternatives for the understanding and explanation of entrepreneurship. It is believed that this approach can become an emerging theoretical-conceptual framework that, despite having been developed here in initial terms, can contribute to the advancement of the field of research on entrepreneurship. It is, in other terms, not to deny the relevance of other theoretical frameworks or other approaches and concepts, but to offer an alternative for carrying out research that aims to problematize the construction of entrepreneurial processes and the construction of organizations, placing in the same context the individual and collective actions of active entrepreneurs and the practices they execute, the routine and daily initiatives, more strategic decisions and more operational decisions, as well as all the cumulative and evolutionary procedures necessary to structure these practices and their repercussions in organizational, strategic, innovative and, of course, entrepreneurial terms. In this regard, it can be seen that the theory of practice, in its various perspectives and possibilities, can contribute effectively to research in entrepreneurship and to undertake entrepreneurship in organizations.
The general objective of this work was to understand the construction of entrepreneurial practices in family businesses. To this end, it was sought, specifically, to identify the entrepreneurial practices related to the business creation processes, and to identify the entrepreneurial practices focused on the organizational renewal, with emphasis to those associated with the production and commercialization processes observed on the investigated enterprises. Based on a qualitative study of multiple cases, four family companies that operate in the craft cachaça production sector, located in different regions of the state of Minas Gerais were studied.
The analysis and discussion of the results of the research allowed for the apprehention of the practices of creation of organizations, the practices of construction, identification and exploration of opportunities, the practices of production and commercialization, and the practices of innovation, which contributed in different ways to the evolution, competitiveness and survival of these companies. Consequently, the data analyzed, in the scope of this work, allowed for the contemplation of the configuration of different entrepreneurial practices, which can be theoretically related to the apprehension of diverse elements present in the broader framework of the conception of entrepreneurship as a practice. It is, therefore, a theoretical and analytical resource that proved to be adequate and potentially interesting for the understanding of the phenomena that manifest themselves in the core of the action of active entrepreneurs belonging to different generations of entrepreneurial families bound to family companies, who structure their initiatives towards the construction of opportunities, the construction of business, the construction of products, the construction of processes, the construction of markets, through their practices.
In fact, it is recognized that the synthesis between procedural and organizational approaches allows for the promotion of a more entrepreneurial vision and interpretation of entrepreneurship, focusing simultaneously on the entrepreneurial process (pre-organizational) and the business creation process (organizational). It is, therefore, the establishment of a link of origin, which contemplates both the foundational aspects of entrepreneurship, including the opportunities, the context, and the background of the action of entrepreneurs, as well as the very construction and reconstruction of organizations, including the processes of opening enterprises, the creation of value, the introduction, development and evolution of innovations, as well as growth and strategic business renewal, among other possibilities. Through this integrative positioning, different paths are opened for the theoretical and empirical apprehension of entrepreneurship. There is, therefore, the basis to promote an alternative to the studies about this phenomenon, thus enabling the emergence of the here called practical approach to entrepreneurship.
In this regard, the dynamism of entrepreneuring effectively leads to the association of aspects of the procedural and organizational approaches of entrepreneurship. The analysis of the studied cases allows to point out in the same movement, the action and execution of the entrepreneur process on the creation of each one of the businesses and the diverse aspects of the development and perpetuation of the entrepreneurial practices linked to them. So, an association is verified between the social construction of entrepreneurial practices, the action of active entrepreneurs (in the cases, the founders, predecessors, successors), and the construction of the phenomenon of entrepreneurship as a practice, in a relationship between practice, practices and performers whose delimitation is taken as central to the conception of organizations from the theory of practice, which can also include the understanding of the entrepreneurship in family businesses. Therefore, the articulation between the notion of entrepreneurship as a practice, on one side, and the analysis of the construction of entrepreneurial practices by active entrepreneurs in an individual and/or collective/family way, on the other, contribute to the unveiling of a series of specificities about the construction of family businesses producing craft cachaça.
This movement, marked by specific research initiatives and by efforts of theoretical elaboration and empirical research, made it possible to fully achieve the objectives of this research. Moreover, the problematization of facts and situations identified and discussed throughout this work, with special reference to the approach of entrepreneurial practices, contributes to the advancement and development of the research field in entrepreneurship, as an alternative that, among others, sheds light on aspects that are sometimes neglected, and sometimes undervalued in the scope of investigations on this phenomenon of economic, social and scientific nature. It is important to emphasize that this theoretical proposition is adequate to the analysis centered on the understanding and explanation of the manifestation of entrepreneurship in organizations that produce craft cachaça, such as those investigated in this research. Nevertheless, this synthesis can also be configured as a wider alternative to research in entrepreneurship, by allowing the understanding and explanation of this phenomenon in other cachaça producing distilleries, on one hand, and in other types of enterprises, such as small businesses, startups, incubated companies, family businesses, among several other possibilities. Thus, the theoretical contribution of this proposition is reinforced, while establishing implications for the understanding and intervention within the entrepreneurial practice, given the possibility of applying the theories, concepts and categories of analysis developed here for the understanding of phenomena and events problematized and observed in various organizational contexts.
Finally, it should be noted that the present research could not be without some limitations. First, from the point of view of theory, there was difficulty in establishing decisions on the various options for the conceptual delimitation of the practical approach to entrepreneurship. As this is an emerging theme in the field, there is still a lack of more in-depth elaborations on the theme, mainly from the point of view of theoretical discussion, but also of ontological and epistemological nature. Thus, despite the attempts and articulations presented here, it is believed that future studies could explore the application of the theoretical framework carried out here, in order to apply it to additional tests and new developments, in a dialogic process of knowledge construction, or even, develop and/or explore the conceptual elements developed in this work in association with other approaches stemming from the theory of practice, such as those advocated by authors of great repercussion in the field of social and human sciences.
Second, from the point of view of the method, there were important difficulties in the choice of cases to be reported, since it was necessary to investigate family organizations producing cachaça that presented certain levels of complexity and competitiveness in their activities. This limited the number of objects to be studied since cachaça production distilleries are mostly informal and/or uncharacterized from any advances in organizational, strategic and innovative terms. Future studies could, in this regard, explore other sectors of activity, other markets, other countries, other regions, other institutional logics, and so on. In addition, there would be interesting studies structured in the sense of directing efforts to the understanding and explanation of other organizational realities, including research on other types and organizational contexts available for the apprehension of entrepreneurial practices. It should also be highlighted that the use of ethnographic inspiration methods, more suitable for obtaining greater depth in relation to the material collected in the scope of empirical research, was not possible for various reasons. Nevertheless, it is believed that the techniques employed here enabled a broad understanding of the elements that were part of the research proposal, being contemplated the objectives of the research in its fullness. It is suggested that future studies use methods and strategies proper of ethnography for the study of entrepreneurial processes, processes of organization creation, and construction and development of entrepreneurial practices in loco and longitudinal perspective, in order to problematize with a greater wealth of detail the evidence necessary for understanding entrepreneurship as a practice. However, it is difficult to have access to these moments, especially those characterized as pre-organizational, because in many cases these events are not known outside the world of the entrepreneur-creator of organizations.
Nevertheless, the present work presents relevant academic and scientific implications. Facing this whole scenario, it is considered that the conceptual application of the concept of entrepreneurship as a practice, duly informed by the contributions of the theory of practice, to a greater degree, and duly inspired by the processes of organizing and strategizing, in particular, allows revealing the vigor of this phenomenon called entrepreneurship and the potential of the entrepreneuring perspective, because it takes up situations that are, at the same time, simple and complex, generic and dynamic, localized and contextualized, around a wide set of situated practices that are guided by an entrepreneurial behavior that potentially approximates to what constitutes the referred phenomenon, in practice.
The composition between the nuances and specificities of each studied case allows the verification of the potential of understanding entrepreneurship as a phenomenon problematized and based on the perspective of the theory of practice. Nevertheless, this recognition, observed through the association between the empirical material collected and its interpretation in the light of the theoretical framework built in this work, requires further elaboration and deepening, with the establishment of theoretical concepts and delimitations to substantiate the emergence of a concept that can, at the limit, constitute an alternative for the area: the practical approach of entrepreneurship.
Cases studied and active entrepreneurs interviewed
Source: developed by the authors.
Entrepreneurial practices of family business creation
Source: research data.
Entrepreneurial practices of craft cachaça production
Source: research data.
Entrepreneurial practices of commercialization of craft cachaça
Source: research data.
Practices of innovation in aspects of production and commercialization of craft cachaça
Source: research data.
