Longevity in the family business: the Alvear case (1729-1906)

The factors of survival of the family business have been analyzed in the academic literature, where different approaches such as strategic management or economic history point to various elements as favoring the perpetuation of a company along several generations beyond their founders. In this paper, a methodological adaptation of the narrative analysis on the process of succession is applied, with a positivist case study approach of the Bodegas Alvear, a family company framed among the ten oldest in Spain. Through the study to the socioeconomic and political context of the farming and industrial sector of the Andalusia of the XVIII and XIX centuries, in which the four first generations of the Alvear family were developed, five key strategic factors in their survival are identified, as well as how the Alvear family solved the transit towards the new agrarian capitalism model of Andalusia.