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Entrepreneurs in Family Business Dynasties pp 147–175Cite as

The Creation of an Entrepreneurial Enterprise

The First Generation: The Entrepreneurs

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Part of the book series: Management for Professionals ((MANAGPROF))

Abstract

Constructing a picture of the Italians who migrated to Victoria in the first half of the twentieth century and who laid the foundations for a successful three-generational family businesses is no easy task. It forms part of the bigger picture of migration to Australia, a movement that has been well captured and interpreted through statistics as well as through oral/written documents by historians, anthropologists, and sociologists who recorded the origins and traditions of communities of Italians and other migrants who worked and settled in various parts of Australia. The stories of a number of individual Italian migrants to Australia have also been recorded, as biographical or autobiographical accounts of their lives, with a focus on their migration experience and their accomplishments in their new country. This chapter focuses on the first generation (G1) members of seven Italian families who started a migration journey, entered into a new reality, and initiated an entrepreneurial process that sowed the seeds for the creation of families and multi-generational family enterprises.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Baldassar (1994, 2001, 2008), Bertelli (1994), Borrie (1954), Bosworth (1988), Bosworth and Ugolini (1992), Castles, Alcorso, Rando and Vasta (1992), Collins (1988), Cresciani (1985), Gentilli (1973, 1983), Jupp (2002), Lancaster Jones (1964), MacDonald and MacDonald (1964), O’Brien (1989), Pesman (1999), Price (1963), Ware (1981), among others.

  2. 2.

    Baldassar and Pesman (2005), Bivona (1994), Bosworth and Bosworth (1993), Davine (2006), Douglass (1994), Gobbo (1998), Huber (1977), Jones (1962), Pascoe (1987, 2000), Peters (1999), Rando (1990), Ruzzene Grollo (2004), Segafreddo (2005), among others.

  3. 3.

    Easdown (2006), O’Brien (2000), Pascoe (1988, 1990, 1992), Ruzzene Grollo (2004), Tobin (2007), among others.

  4. 4.

    Migration, whether voluntary or forced, can be explained in terms of the push-pull model, which relates to economic, social, political, religious hardships that encourage emigration from poorer countries (push factors) and comparative advantages that encourage immigration in more economically advanced and politically stable countries (pull factors) (Bonacich, 1993).

  5. 5.

    Myrtleford is on the Great Alpine Road, approximately 300 km north-east of Melbourne. This locality became a focus area for migrants originating from the Veneto and Trentino (Baldassar & Pesman, 2005, p. 73).

  6. 6.

    Roberto was accepted by the Australian authorities as a migrant in the category “specialised tradesman—semi-skilled worker”, so the migration process was brief and he qualified for an “assisted passage” to Australia, which involved assistance with the cost of passage from the Australian Government as an inducement to migrate. Only a small number of Italian migrants were offered assistance.

  7. 7.

    A peasant who cultivated the land for a landlord on condition of receiving a share of the farm produce, or as a tenant, paying a fixed rent on the land that he and his family worked.

  8. 8.

    The concept of Italianness (Alexakis & Janiszewski, 1998; Pascoe, 1992) is used in this book broadly to refer to a set of values and characteristics generally considered to be Italian. This notion may have variances according to differences in regional, class, and educational background. The concept of Italianness used abroad may encapsulate an ethnicised perception of Italians and/or Italian culture and include stereotypical representations. For a discussion on the notion of the representation of identities, refer to Hall, 1996.

  9. 9.

    For a full discussion of differences in collectivist and individualistic societies, refer to Hofstede, 1994, pp. 57–78.

  10. 10.

    “Sistemazione means having a place and a sense of belonging in Australia. It is a sense of citizenship” (Sagazio, in Yule 2004, p. 90).

  11. 11.

    Acknowledgement of these women has been made through the presentation of two papers at international conferences by Hougaz and Betta (2009, 2010) published through conference proceedings.

  12. 12.

    Veneti are Italians of the Veneto region, situated in north-east Italy.

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  1. Study Connections, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Laura Hougaz

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Hougaz, L. (2015). The Creation of an Entrepreneurial Enterprise. In: Entrepreneurs in Family Business Dynasties. Management for Professionals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13918-0_8

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