γνῶθι σεαυτόν – Know Thyself: Women's Leadership, Knowledge Stewardship, and the Foundation Museum as a Transgenerational Artifact in the Salvatore Ferragamo Family Business

Family firms must preserve an understanding of who they are as leadership, ownership, and family roles change across generations. This exploratory single-case study examines how women shape the organizational infrastructures through which family firms preserve and transmit knowledge. Focusing on the Salvatore Ferragamo case, it analyzes the foundation museum and archive as a Family Boundary Organization and as a knowledge management artifact, created and stewarded across generations by Wanda, Fiamma, Fulvia, and Giovanna Ferragamo. Drawing on documentary and archival sources and on semi-structured interviews, with an abductive approach, the paper builds on women's leadership in family firms, innovation through tradition, organizational identity, and socioemotional wealth. It proposes that the museum works inwardly, socializing the next generation into the firm's values and memory, and outwardly, reinforcing authenticity, reputation, and legitimacy. The study positions women as knowledge architects and not as peripheral actors in family business systems.