The Two Sides of the Business Family


Book Description

This book focuses on a central success factor for family businesses: maintaining the decision-making ability over generations while not jeopardizing the business due to family conflict, inefficient governance structures, or lack of identification. The authors identify that this is not as easy as the endeavor to bring two social systems together with contradicting logic (family and business) leads to many dangerous pitfalls. This book presents outcomes of a unique research project in which family managers of eleven of the oldest and largest German family businesses, at least the fourth generation, met for more than three years on a regular basis and presented the essence of their family governance structures to each other and to the authors. It was a joint “learning journey” that admits identifying twelve core questions that these families had been answering to keep up the relationship between family and business successfully over generations. Obviously, there is no “right” answer to these questions. The key to success is rather engaging the families in a process to find out their own answers and make them aware of the “two sides”: being a family is different from being a business family.




The Two Sides of the Business Family


Book Description

This book focuses on a central success factor for family businesses: maintaining the decision-making ability over generations while not jeopardizing the business due to family conflict, inefficient governance structures, or lack of identification. The authors identify that this is not as easy as the endeavor to bring two social systems together with contradicting logic (family and business) leads to many dangerous pitfalls. This book presents outcomes of a unique research project in which family managers of eleven of the oldest and largest German family businesses, at least the fourth generation, met for more than three years on a regular basis and presented the essence of their family governance structures to each other and to the authors. It was a joint “learning journey” that admits identifying twelve core questions that these families had been answering to keep up the relationship between family and business successfully over generations. Obviously, there is no “right” answer to these questions. The key to success is rather engaging the families in a process to find out their own answers and make them aware of the “two sides”: being a family is different from being a business family.




Family Entrepreneurship


Book Description

This book provides recent ideas, insights, facts, evidence, frameworks, and perspectives on how and why entrepreneurial families are successful over generations. The book focuses on how families successfully implement entrepreneurship across generations. That success, it argues, requires entrepreneurship at the level of the family, not only in the businesses the family owns and manages. Written by noted academics and consultants who are authorities on family entrepreneurship, the chapters provide a comprehensive exploration of the characteristics of successful entrepreneurial families, their motivations, how they behave over time, and, suggestions for how business families can encourage and sustain entrepreneurship. This comprehensive look at family entrepreneurship will serve as a fundamental reference text for family business consultants, owners, and scholars.







De Gruyter Handbook of Business Families


Book Description

The management field increasingly recognizes that most firms in the world are family firms and that these entities operate differently from the non-family firms on which most of our current management theories are based. The De Gruyter Handbook of Business Families brings together work from leading academics who explore emerging research themes relevant to business families, particularly drawing in new insights from adjacent disciplines that can advance the family business field. The handbook challenges the traditional notion of the "single firm–single family" that has characterized most early research on family business. Recognizing that families may simultaneously own or control multiple businesses as well as substantial wealth beyond these firms in the form of financial and non-financial assets, this handbook focuses on business families rather than the narrower construct of family business. The contributions in this handbook explore the relatively neglected dynamics between individuals with family ties that shape the interaction between family and business; business families with multiple businesses; how business families adopt formal rules and processes around their joint activities; and the institutionalization of wealth and business families in society. The De Gruyter Handbook of Business Families fills a gap in the family business research literature and is an essential reference work for researchers and graduate-level students in the area of business families.







Managing Business Family Dynasties


Book Description

This book deals with dynastic business families. Such families are characterized by a circle of owners comprising more than 50 family members, which typically face specific issues and challenges for which there has been little research knowledge and practical approaches until now. The book presents results and findings from a special research project on “big family management” where 7 representatives of dynastic families from Germany were studied over a 3-year period. The result was the identification of six topic areas that management in these business families has to deal with. At the same time, the study observes that dynastic business families hardly follow the logic of classic families anymore, but can rather be understood as networks with common family backgrounds. The study also reveals that a large number of business families are heading for large shareholder groups due to changed inheritance practices. The contents outlined here provide an orientation framework for the growing business family.




Harvard Business Review Family Business Handbook


Book Description

Navigate the complex decisions and critical relationships necessary to create and sustain a healthy family business—and business family. Though "family business" may sound like it refers only to mom-and-pop shops, businesses owned by families are among the most significant and numerous in the world. But surprisingly few resources exist to help navigate the unique challenges you face when you share the executive suite, financial statements, and holidays. How do you make the right decisions, critical to the long-term survival of any business, with the added challenge of having to do so within the context of a family? The HBR Family Business Handbook brings you sophisticated guidance and practical advice from family business experts Josh Baron and Rob Lachenauer. Drawing on their decades-long experience working closely with a wide range of family businesses of all sizes around the world, the authors present proven methods and approaches for communicating effectively, managing conflict, building the right governance structures, and more. In the HBR Family Business Handbook you'll find: A new perspective on what makes family businesses succeed and fail A framework to help you make good decisions together Step-by-step guidance on managing change within your business family Key questions about wealth, unique to family businesses, that you can't afford to ignore Assessments to help you determine where you are—and where you want to go Stories of real companies, from Marchesi Antinori to Radio Flyer Chapter summaries you can use to reinforce what you've learned Keep this comprehensive guide with you to help you build, grow, and position your family business to thrive across generations. HBR Handbooks provide ambitious professionals with the frameworks, advice, and tools they need to excel in their careers. With step-by-step guidance, time-honed best practices, and real-life stories, each comprehensive volume helps you to stand out from the pack—whatever your role.




Elgar Encyclopedia of Family Business


Book Description

The intertwining of family relationships with business imperatives provides a fascinating but complex arena for study. This Encyclopedia is a valuable resource because family business studies are necessarily multi-disciplinary and wide-ranging, drawing on entrepreneurship, management, governance, economics, ethics, business history, as well as family studies.




The SAGE Handbook of Family Business


Book Description

The SAGE Handbook of Family Business captures the conceptual map and state-of-the-art thinking on family business - an area experiencing rapid global growth in research and education since the last three decades. Edited by the leading figures in family business studies, with contributions and editorial board support from the most prominent scholars in the field, this Handbook reflects on the development and current status of family enterprise research in terms of applied theories, methods, topics investigated, and perspectives on the field′s future. The SAGE Handbook of Family Business is divided into following six sections, allowing for ease of navigation while gaining a multi-dimensional perspective and understanding of the field. Part I: Theoretical perspectives in family business studies Part II: Major issues in family business studies Part III: Entrepreneurial and managerial aspects in family business studies Part IV: Behavioral and organizational aspects in family business studies Part V: Methods in use in family business studies Part VI: The future of the field of family business studies By including critical reflections and presenting possible alternative perspectives and theories, this Handbook contributes to the framing of future research on family enterprises around the world. It is an invaluable resource for current and future scholars interested in understanding the unique dynamics of family enterprises under the rubric of entrepreneurship, strategic management, organization theory, accounting, marketing or other related areas.