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Although the concepts of family business, internationalization, and agency theory have received some attention in the relevant literature, these concepts and theories have been used independently. The purpose of this paper is to help close the gap between what is known and what needs to be known about the decision-making processes of internationalization of family managers (FM) and non-family managers (NFMs).

The paper analyzes the story of Busscar, a Brazilian firm that began internationalization under an FM and ended it under an NFM. The management transition took place suddenly, as the family CEO died in a tragic accident, and the company appointed an NFM to replace him virtually overnight. These circumstances, as well as the fact that Busscar accelerated its internationalization process after the transition only to go bankrupt a few years later makes this case critical.

The paper concludes that under NFMs, the speed and scope of the firm internationalization processes were accelerated and the financial risks were augmented, which is in line with the agency theory hypothesis and contradicts suggestions that NFMs tend to be more structured.

Many researchers argue that it is important to professionalize the management of family firms. It is expected that an NFM leads to a more structured strategy. The study shows otherwise; changing the manager leads to opportunistic internationalization using emerging strategies rather than deliberate ones.

This study suggests that firms, networks, entrepreneurship, and ownership are not the only important variables. Manager origin (inside or outside the family) can change everything.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.