This article aims to offer a review of the possibilities offered by a ‘narrative’ approach to examine the succession in businesses through some meaningful examples. In the first part, the focus is on a strictly literary representation, i.d. the novel Il padrone by Goffredo Parise (1965), which is still relevant to date for its extraordinary attention (and artistic outcome) on dynamics in a family business context. In this novel the notion of ‘personal myth’ fulfils a particular role, with all its consequences for the business. In the second part, it is shown an obviously incomplete series of case-studies in which economists use literary techniques and tools to represent and/or analyse business intergenerational transition, especially in family business. In the third part, one of these studies – focused on the Berger family case – is examined more deeply to understand its theoretic choices and its scientific accomplishments, in order to wish for a real multidisciplinary approach to this topic, involving literary critics, theorists and linguists.