This thesis aimed to investigate the perceived impacts and implications of the initial public offering in a family-owned business for the organizational identity and identification of its members. The IPO is considered as a source of financing for expansion projects, within the context of the adoption of value growth strategies, used by companies - especially by the Brazilian companies. Although organizational change is a recurrent subject of investigations in the academic literature, this study investigates a specific type of change that has been poorly addressed by the organizational studies. Even though there is vast empirical literature addressing IPO s, they often investigate the issue from the financial and economic perspectives, and yet little is known about the implications from the organizational perspective. This study adopted the interpretive paradigm (Burrell and Morgan, 1979), through an exploratory qualitative research (Gil, 1989), based on an instrumental case study (Stake, 1995, 2000). Evidence was collected through (a) media and literature review about the company, (b) public documents research, (c) analysis of internal documents provided by the company, and (d) interviews with managers. The results of this case study revealed that the IPO is an organizational event that can raise the most profound changes in organizations similar to spin-offs and mergers that have already been addressed through empirical research. The findings of this research lead to a group of theoretical and practical implications that can support both academics interested in this issue and executives and managers responsible for preparing the IPO process in organizations.