Agency or Stewardship? Rethinking Governance and Conflict in Chinese-Indonesian Family Businesses

This study examines how agency-related tensions and stewardship commitments coexist in the governance of Chinese-Indonesian family businesses in Batam. It asks how family members interpret authority, succession, financial accountability, and continuity across generations. An interpretive qualitative design with a phenomenological orientation draws on six purposively selected informants from three generations. Semi-structured interviews, observations, documents, and field notes inform thematic analysis supported by NVivo 14, including hierarchical coding, matrix queries, and cluster analysis. The analysis identifies five connected themes: founder dominance, intergenerational conflict, family loyalty and stewardship, financial transparency, and guanxi-based social capital. Founder control and informal financial practices create tensions over autonomy and accountability, while loyalty, reputation, and responsibility for the family legacy sustain commitment. The generational coding matrix indicates that younger participants emphasize financial transparency more strongly without abandoning stewardship values. These descriptive patterns do not constitute statistical tests. The study contributes a culturally situated interpretation in which agency and stewardship explain different dimensions of the same governance practices. It also suggests that professional reporting, clearer roles, and structured succession can express stewardship by protecting long-term continuity rather than undermining family solidarity.