Search results

Shows how a regional family company threatened by national competition must make changes to its structure and way of doing business or face extinction or sale.

This chapter explores how next-generation women owners participate and contribute to their families’ single-family offices (SFOs). To examine this issue, we analyze 12 SFOs from Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia Pacific.

Our results show that daughters actively participate in philanthropic efforts, community-based entrepreneurship projects and family council meetings. Yet, they are rarely involved in the SFO investment committees or board of directors. Moreover, female next gens are less likely to propose new business ventures to the family council or SFO board of directors. Apparently, daughters are not as encouraged as sons to create their own for-profit start-up. Family inclusive values and culture, parental influence and/or sibling’s encouragement, the presence of female role models, and the existence of a gender-diverse SFO top management team positively influence the way women owners relate to and connect into the SFO.

We realize, too, that when women owners are not involved in the family council, less family-related activities are promoted. Occasional family-related activities are associated with the family council limited operation and null vision of intergenerational wealth transfer. Further findings are grouped in five major themes: (1) Motivation to set up the SFO, (2) SFO activities, (3) New business ventures, (4) SFO governance structures and (5) SFO strategy and vision. Based on the SFO strategy, vision and activities, we identified four types of SFOs: The SFO as a Legacy School, as an Entrepreneurship School, as a Community School, and as a Decorative-Investment Arm.

This research is aimed to better understand what characteristics of family firms create a context in which family governance systems are more frequently adopted.

We analyse a sample of 490 Spanish family businesses using cluster analysis, and we identify four different types of family businesses whose characteristics are associated to the adoption of different family governance systems, i.e. family councils and family protocols. The comparison between clusters of the baseline parameters was performed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) for parametric variables, the χ2 test for parametric variables and Kruskal-Wallis for nonparametric variables. By conducting between-profile analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), we tested for differences in the dependent variables (i.e. the existence of family councils and/or existence of family protocols) between the clusters, using cluster membership as the independent variable.

Taking into account the characteristics of family firms in terms of ownership structure, management involvement, and family and organizational complexity, we identify four different contexts that create different communication needs and are related to the use of different family governance mechanisms. We characterize the different contexts or types of family firms as: founder-centric, protective, consensual and business-evolved. Our findings show that family protocols are associated to contexts with high family involvement in management and family complexity, while family councils are more frequent when there is a separation of managerial and ownership roles and there is a high organizational and family complexity.

The study highlights the value of social systems theory in order to explain the association between the characteristics of different firm types and contexts, and the use of family councils and family protocols to govern the relationship between the owner family and the business.

Family governance mechanisms are widely recommended by practitioners and scholars. However, they are usually adopted only by a small percentage of family firms. This study helps to better understand what family governance systems may be more appropriate in different contexts and relativize the necessity of these governance mechanisms in function of the communication needs created within each context.

The improvement of family governance mechanisms helps to increase the likelihood of survival and durability of family firms. These firms contribute to more than 60% of employment in most developed countries. Consequently, good governance in family firms has social implications in terms of labour conditions and stability.

Most family firms don't use family protocols or family councils to govern the relationship between the owner family and the firm. However, little is known about the reasons for this lack of structuration of the family-firm relationship. Using social systems theory, our research contributes to better understand the conditions in which business families are more prone to use structured forms to manage this relationship, as well as the reasons that may be constraining their adoption.

This case presents the history and recent governance challenges of Carvajal, S.A., a Colombia-based, family-owned, billion-dollar-plus holding company that had offered printing-related (e.g., Yellow Pages, notebooks) and other products and services across and beyond South America for more than a century. Specifically, the case details the company’s state of affairs in early 2011, a time by which Carvajal’s flagship businesses had matured rapidly with the emergence of digital technology and diminished demand for paper/print-based products. Though profits and growth remained positive, Carvajal’s leaders knew that upholding the business’s legacy of returns, dividends for all family members, and extensive philanthropy would take significant strategy and execution.

Compounding the strategy issues, Carvajal faced these market challenges with new leadership: the first non-family CEO since the company’s inception. Well-established Colombian executive Ricardo Obregon had been hired in 2008 over two family candidates to lead the business. Obregon was to oversee a complex governance network that included a holding company with seven operating companies, their management and respective boards, a family council, and 280 members (including spouses) of a shareholding family in its sixth generation. Carvajal’s business and family leaders had to face market issues and decisions that included the possibility of taking public the operating companies and/or the holding company while maintaining the business’s long traditions of unity, respect, strong ethics, and philanthropy. That meant optimizing several crucial relationships: between the family and the new CEO; between the family and the board; between the operating companies and the holding company; and between members of the large Carvajal family, many of whom now resided outside of Colombia and Latin America.

Understand general and specific challenges associated with carrying on a longstanding family business facing multiple market challenges; explore the process of engaging a complex family-business governance network to handle business challenges while maintaining family values; consider the effects of culture on a multi-generation family business.

This paper examines how a “quasi-formal” organisation in a developing country engages in informal means of organising and decision-making through the use of calculative measures.

The paper presents a case study of a large-scale indigenous manufacturing company in Ghana. Data for the study were collected through the use of semi-structured interviews conducted both onsite and off-site, supplemented by informal conversations and documentary analysis. Weber's notions of rationalities and traditionalism informed the analysis.

The paper advances knowledge about the practical day-to-day organisation of resources and the associated substantive rational calculative measures used for decision-making in quasi-formal organisations operating in a traditional setting. Instead of formal rational organisational mechanisms such as hierarchical organisational structures, production planning, labour controls and budgetary practices, the organisational mechanisms are found to be shaped by institutional and structural conditions which result from historical, sociocultural and traditional practices of Ghanaian society. These contextual substantive rational calculative measures consist of the native lineage system of inheritance, chieftaincy, trust and the power concealed within historically established sociocultural practices.

This paper is one of a few studies providing evidence of how local and traditional social practices contribute to shaping organising and decision-making activities in indigenous “quasi-formal” organisations. The paper extends our understanding of the nexus between “technical rational” calculative measures and the traditional culture and social practices prevailing in sub-Saharan Africa in general, and Ghana in particular.

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature concerning the negative effects of conflict among family businesses and to make practitioner focussed recommendations for the prevention, management, and resolution of conflict. This paper discusses the prevalence of conflict in family firms, differentiates the types of conflict present, and recommends proven approaches to prevent and manage the conflict, with a focus on corporate governance tools. Examples of well known companies are presented.

A review was conducted of the literature concerning family business conflict and corporate governance.

Conflict is a common problem in family firms that has significant consequences for the business and the family. Research has shown effective governance may reduce and manage conflict.

This was a literature review. As such it did not perform original research.

This paper has practical implications for family business practitioners. The paper offers the negative aspects of conflict and recommends effective mechanisms such as governance tools to enable the prevention, management, and resolution of conflict.

Implications exist for practitioners and policy makers in order to reduce conflict and increase the viability of family firms.

The scholarly literature has been reviewed and synthesized into distillation for family business owners.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to family firm and entrepreneurship literature by providing an examination of how family involvement in management (FIM) moderates the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO)’s dimensions and family firm performance (FFP).

Through a survey study, the research was developed using a sample of 175 family firms in Saudi Arabia to test the proposed hypotheses using hierarchical linear regression.

The findings revealed a strong positive and significant linkage of proactiveness and FIM with FFP, but, no significant relationship between innovativeness and risk-taking with FFP. However, when FIM contingencies were hypothesized, a new significant influence from the interaction between risk-taking and FIM on FFP was found.

The main limitation lies in the fact that it is not possible to claim generalization of findings to family firms in other emerging or transitional countries as the research is focused on Saudi family firms. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in order to produce new knowledge on EO of family firms and to help these firms not consider FIM as an impediment to the development of resources and capabilities necessary to the promotion of entrepreneurial activities within their operations.

There is a contribution to the literature on EO by showing that EO construct and its dimensions have great generality within family firms in a transitional context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the dynamic managerial capabilities (DMC) of the spouse (either working or non-working) of a family firm owner on firm innovativeness. This paper assesses the role of three elements of the DMC of owners' spouses (emotion regulation, conflict resolution and networking capabilities) that are bridged by familiness on family firm innovativeness.

This paper presents the results of a multiple case study. Twelve cases were selected: six innovative and six non-innovative family firms in Lithuania. The study design enabled a comparison not only of innovative and non-innovative family firms but also of non-working and working spouses of family firm owners.

The findings show that family firm owners' spouses contribute to firm innovativeness through their DMC in terms of emotion regulation, conflict resolution and networking capabilities.

This research focused on a sample of firms in Lithuania. Future studies should broaden the research to other countries.

This research provides empirical evidence of the hidden role of the DMC of family firm owners' spouses and their contribution to firm innovativeness. This paper extends the application of DMC to family business research.