Profits Aren't Everything, They're the Only Thing


Book Description

When small- and medium-sized business owners first hear George Cloutier's rules, they often think he's a madman. His controversial rules for doing business—rules that aren't taught at Harvard Business School—include: The best family business has one member. Weekends are for working, not playing golf or coaching. Never pay your vendors on time. Wear your control freak badge with pride. Quit denial: if your business is failing during a recession, it's your fault. As the founder and CEO of American Management Services, Cloutier has emerged as "the leading advocate for small business" (Reuters), having spent over thirty years guiding business owners through the tough choices that line the road to profitability. He and his company have worked with more than six thousand companies, averting certain ruin for some and generating seemingly impossible growth and profitability for others. Cloutier graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Business School, but the lessons in this book aren't from there. Unlike his classmates, most of whom headed straight to Wall Street, Cloutier has been on the docks at 2 a.m. counting heads of lettuce for food distributors to make sure nothing would disappear without a waybill. He's spent long, overnight hours in truck stops, making sure sticky fingers stayed out of the tills. Cloutier and his colleagues at American Management Services become personal pitt bulls to the CEOs who hire them, doing whatever it takes to bring their clients' businesses back into long-term profitability. Profits Aren't Everything, They're the Only Thing is the long- overdue wake-up call for 23 million small- and midsize business owners across America. This book serves up the hard-boiled, unadulterated truth to aspiring and established entrepreneurs, without apologies. His no-nonsense advice may be hard to hear at times, but it works.




Family Enterprises


Book Description

Family firms are to be found in every sector of commercial activity. Commitment, family values and pride in the business are typically their special strengths, yet they also face major challenges in reconciling the needs of the business with those of the family. Drawing on the author's extensive experience of working with and advising some of the world's most successful business families, this new and updated edition of Family Enterprises: The Essentials explains the pitfalls, tensions and competing demands that destroy too many family businesses. These problems can be avoided, and Peter Leach reveals the techniques and strategies needed to do so. Running a successful family business is always a huge challenge, but this book offers real insight and guidance on how to keep both business and family united and buoyant.




Start Up Nation


Book Description

A guide to starting a profitable business includes advice, tips, and strategies for assessing one's tolerance for risk, taking advantage of one's skills, avoiding common mistakes, and focusing on what one loves to do.




The Family Business Map


Book Description

Combining the expertise of two consultants and academics from East and West, this book provides an international guide for family businesses, showing how to identify and implement the best governance strategies. Packed with case studies and interviews, this is the ultimate guide for family businesses wanting to achieve long-term success.




"Jiffy"


Book Description

From the front jacket flap: Jiffy: A Family Tradition is the inspiring story of the Holmes family of Chelsea, Michigan, and their 104-year-old Chelsea Milling Company. At the turn of the last century, Michigan had more than 700 flour mills. Today Chelsea Milling, one of the five mills that remain, is an internationally renowned trailblazer in the packaged-food industry. Four generations have nurtured the company with values so old-fashioned they have become revolutionary. The Holmes family has survived world wars, the Great Depression, personal tragedies, and monumental changes in the food industry. Through it all, they've managed to retain both their private and public integrity, while competing head to head with industry giants many times their size. Discover the secret ingredients that have made the family behind "Jiffy" respected leaders in the corporate world and heroes in the eyes of their longtime employees.




The Modern Family Business


Book Description

Provides real world studies of the family in business, by observing typical firms rather than dynasties. It looks at how the nature of family business is changing in our times and provides insight into the lessons we can learn from this. The book focuses on the impact for the professional non-family manager.




Family Business Studies


Book Description

ÔThis book provides a thorough review and compendium of important family business research. It should be in the personal library of every family business scholar and graduate student involved in this vital field of study.Õ Ð Michael A. Hitt, Texas A&M University, US ÔA systematic review of the field and an incredibly useful reference book for anyone involved in studying or teaching family business.Õ Ð Sara Carter OBE FRSE, Strathclyde Business School, UK ÔThis book offers a succinct but thorough overview of how our understanding of significant issues in family business has evolved through rigorous research. This annotated bibliography of the 215 top-cited family business studies provides the empirical evidence and the basis for insightful comments from the authors on topics which will benefit from further scholarly debate and research. The authors are to be congratulated for making accessible those research contributions which have the potential to make a meaningful difference to the practice of family business.Õ Ð Jill Thomas, The University of Adelaide Business School, Australia ÔI highly recommend the annoted bibliography by De Massis, Sharma, Chua, and Chrisman to experienced scholars as well as to incoming researchers. The authors selected carefully (and in a transparent manner) relevant papers and summarized them in a way that provides a helpful basis for future research. Well done!Õ Ð Sabine B. Rau, WHUÐOtto Beisheim School of Management, Germany ÔA welcome addition to the field of family business studies! Offers an update and thorough compendium of relevant research conducted within the last 15 years. A most useful reference for doctoral students, established scholars and thoughtful practitioners. Importantly, the first three chapters offer critical commentary and synthesis that go well beyond what one typically finds in an annotated bibliography. Overall, this book offers a solid foundation for moving the study of family business forward.Õ Ð Lloyd Steier, University of Alberta, Canada ÔIf I had been asked to suggest the currently most-needed editorial endeavor for advancing family business studies, I would have answered with no hesitation: an up-to-date annotated bibliography. The fieldÕs growth over the past 15 years has been so intense, that even experts who devote most of their research efforts to family business Ð not to mention younger scholars approaching the field Ð will significantly benefit from De Massis, Sharma, Chua, and ChrismanÕs indispensable work.Õ Ð Carlo Salvato, Bocconi University, Italy and Associate Editor, Family Business Review This book catalogues the 215 most-cited empirical, theoretical, and practical articles on family business published in 33 journals since 1996. Researchers, students, and practicing managers will find it indispensable as a quick reference and guide to what we have learned about family firms. Annotations for the articles consist of: summary of key findings, research questions, contributions, and research implications. They also include a detailed description of the methodologies, empirical data, definitions, and conceptual models used. In addition, the book features chapters that review the literature, discuss how family businesses have been defined, present recent trends in family business empirical research, and provide an agenda for future research. Scholars, researchers and PhD students in the fields of family business, entrepreneurship, organization theory, management, economics, finance, anthropology, sociology and business history will find this compendium insightful. The topics covered in the book will also prove to be essential to practitioners Ð both advisors and operators of family enterprises Ð as it will provide evidence-based knowledge on the issues and dilemmas faced by them in everyday life.




Managing for the Long Run


Book Description

Fidelity, Hallmark, Michelin, and Wal-Mart are renowned industry powerhouses with long leadership track records. Yet these celebrated companies are united by another factor not generally equated with competitive success: They are all family-controlled businesses. While many view the hallmarks of family businesses—stable strategies, clan cultures, and unencumbered family ownership—as weaknesses, Danny Miller and Isabelle Le Breton-Miller argue that it is these very characteristics that create formidable competitive advantages for many such firms. Managing for the Long Run draws from a worldwide study of enduring, family-run organizations—including Cargill, Timken, L.L. Bean, The New York Times, and IKEA—to reveal their unconventional success strategies and how these strategies can be adopted and applied in any organization. Miller and Le Breton-Miller show how four driving passions of family-run firms—command, continuity, community, and connection—give rise to a set of practices that defy modern management thinking yet ensure a company’s long term competitive advantage. Outlining how these practices can enhance strategic efforts from operations to brand leadership to innovation, this book shows what every company must do to manage for the long run.




Understanding Family-Owned Business Groups


Book Description

This book addresses the increasing prominence of family-owned business groups and their potential to influence growth and development in the global economy. Family businesses are not necessarily converging towards unitary models of corporate governance or organizational designs, but remain heterogeneous in a global economy. Empirical evidence on the developmental effects of family-owned business groups is fragmented and inconclusive: are there tangible differences between family-owned business groups in emerging economies and developed countries? Are there important variations across and between industries? How have geopolitical circumstances shaped their activities? In this book, the author seeks alternative, pluralistic, and cross-disciplinary approaches through economic, management, and organizational perspectives. This book provides readers with a core understanding of how both corporate governance and business strategy are shaped by the institutional frameworks of markets, as well as knowledge into how institutional context shapes the governance and strategies of family business groups. It is an invaluable reference tool for scholars and students in the social sciences, as well as professionals involved in strategic management issues within a knowledge management context.