Developing Next Generation Leaders For Transgenerational Entrepreneurial Family Enterprises

This illustrative book considers the interface of business structures, contexts, and leadership building blocks to explore the contingent nature of leadership development in transgenerational entrepreneurship. Longitudinal case studies of 27 family firms in nine different countries provide a rich, global selection of leadership development insights by examining the roles of values, professionalization, leadership style and other contingent factors. The diversity of cases and chapters provides a rich foundation for insight into the pathways currently in use to develop the next generation leaders, illuminating the strategies and pathways of successful transgenerational family enterprises. By examining the available literature and one or more case studies, each chapter draws pragmatic conclusions, with findings that suggest the importance of focusing on leadership as a shared capability, transmission of values to maintain an entrepreneurial culture, the fit between professionalization and values to increase transgenerational potential, the need to address the structure of the business and the focus on parenting to develop next generations. This path-breaking book will inform family business researchers as they explore the ways in use to develop the next generation. Each chapter starts with a mini-case study focused on a dilemma related to leader development, making this book an excellent resource for educators in undergraduate, graduate, or executive programs.

Discover What Makes Family Businesses Beat the Odds and Thrive over Generations Families are complicated; family businesses even more so. Like other companies, family-run enterprises must develop leadership and entrepreneurial skills. But they must also manage family dynamics that rarely mirror the best practices in the latest Harvard Business Review. Allan Cohen and Pramodita Sharma, scholars with deep professional and personal roots in family businesses, show how enterprising families can transmit the hunger for excellence across generations. Using examples of firms that flourished and those that failed, they describe the practices that characterize entrepreneurial individuals, families, and organizations and offer pragmatic advice that can be tailored to your unique situation.

This book offers a ‘contemporary’ understanding of families in business and serves as a springboard for ongoing evolution of families, their composition, transformations, and activities. The first chapter in this volume highlights the different approaches to family and concludes that identifying and understanding the entity ‘family in business’ is the cornerstone to understanding behaviours of family businesses. The concept of ‘family in business’ as a socially constructed entity allows for not only a broader scope of the concept to include individuals who share a faith (chapter 2), but also multi- generational families and chosen families. Narratives, or stories, are means for families in business to mark the boundary of the family in business (chapter 3), because not all members of the family are necessarily members of the family in business. Families and their businesses influence each other (chapter 4) and engender the family influence on the firm (‘familiness’) and firm influence of the family (‘enterpriseness’). The last two chapters are dedicated to transgenerational family businesses, with a focus on learning between generations—chapter 5 highlights the importance of unlearning (to learn new knowledge and different ways of conducting business) and the final chapter focuses on what knowledge is actually transferred relative to initial plans. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Entrepreneurship & Regional Development.

This edited collection analyses the unexplored concept of the family business group, evaluating the opportunities and advantages that it creates for entrepreneurs. Raising a number of important questions, the authors construct a new research agenda for the complex topic of the family business group, which will ultimately assess its contribution towards the economy and society in general. The chapters provide a core understanding of the phenomenon and cover its formation, nature and complexities, as well as offering a holistic perspective and exploring factors such as scale, size and regional contexts. A useful tool for those researching small businesses, organisation, and business strategy, this book highlights the key advantages of family business group structures in both developed and developing countries, and local and national contexts.

The task of preparing next-generation family members for leadership responsibilities in the family business is too important to leave to chance. There are 17 million family businesses in the United States, and they generate half of the nation's GDP. Family-owned or controlled businesses produce three-quarters of GDP in most other countries and comprise over 80% of businesses in the world's free economies, including a fifth of the companies in the Fortune Global 500. Despite their importance, the survival rate for family enterprises through multiple generations of family ownership is low. Only 30% survive from the first generation to the second, 12% from the second to the third, and 4% from the third to the fourth. Weak next-generation leadership is one of the top three threats to long-term family firm success. Next-generation family business leaders face a set of challenges unique to family-owned businesses. Not only must they meet the challenges of sustaining a successful business, they must also negotiate the complexities of the family and ownership systems that are integral components of family enterprises, often while living in the shadow of a successful entrepreneur who happens to be a father, mother, or other close relative. While there is general agreement in the family business literature about the importance of next-generation leadership, there is a lack of rigorous research on how future leaders are developed in family firms. This study employed an integrated sequential mixed-methods approach to address that gap by identifying and exploring relationships among factors that influence the effectiveness of next-generation family leaders and the degree to which they are positively engaged with their work in the family business. Three phases of research were conducted. The first was a qualitative study of 37 leaders of privately-owned, mid-market family businesses in the United States and Canada. Early leadership learning experiences, emotional and social intelligence, job assignments with real responsibility and accountability, and personal reflection were identified as factors that promote next-generation leader development. Obligatory or entitled motivations for joining the family business, being shielded from risk and/or the consequences of failure, a family environment characterized by unresolved conflict, and being promoted to positions without necessary qualifications were identified as impediments to the acquisition of leadership skill by next-generation leaders. The qualitative results informed by leadership, intentional change, and family systems theories were used to develop a conceptual framework that guided the two quantitative phases of the study. Data was collected from 100 next-generation family firm leaders and 350 family and non-family leaders and employees with whom they work. The first quantitative study found that the degree to which next-generation leaders assumed personal responsibility for their actions and decisions was strongly related to their display of emotional and social intelligence competencies, which in turn, was the major driver of their leadership effectiveness. Next-generation leader acceptance of personal responsibility was also strongly related to the degree to which they were held accountable by others, which positively affected their engagement with work in the family firm. The climate in the business-owning family affected next-generation leader effectiveness and work engagement through its influence on the level of personal responsibility assumed by the next-generation leaders. A family climate characterized by open communication, intergenerational attention to the developmental needs of the next generation, and cognitive cohesion increased next-generation acceptance of personal responsibility. A family climate characterized by an autocratic senior generation that exercises unquestioned authority decreased the degree to which next-generation leaders accepted responsibility. The second quantitative study found that next-generation leaders who were provided with challenging work assignments, meaningful mentoring relationships, and opportunities to receive candid feedback on their leadership behaviors were more likely to become self-aware, effective leaders who derive positive energy, inspiration, and fulfillment from their work in the family firm. Open communication in the business-owning family increased next-generation leader self-awareness and positively affected the expression of emotional and social intelligence competencies in their leadership behaviors, which drove their leadership effectiveness. The study contributes to family business and leadership theory by identifying mechanisms through which the climate of the business-owning family affects next-generation leader development. It also suggests that a family climate characterized by an autocratic senior generation may contribute to the low survival rate of family firms through its negative influence on the acquisition of leadership skills by next-generation family members. The study contributes to family business practice by demonstrating the importance of balancing a focus on the business with a focus on the family, and by identifying ways business-owning families can help next-generation family members develop the skills they need to be effective, engaged leaders of the family enterprise. The study's final, and perhaps most important, message is for next-generation leaders. Ultimately, their leadership effectiveness, as well as the benefits they derive from working in the family firm, is up to them.

Discover What Makes Family Businesses Beat the Odds and Thrive over Generations Families are complicated; family businesses even more so. Like other companies, family-run enterprises must develop leadership and entrepreneurial skills. But they must also manage family dynamics that rarely mirror the best practices in the latest Harvard Business Review. Allan Cohen and Pramodita Sharma, scholars with deep professional and personal roots in family businesses, show how enterprising families can transmit the hunger for excellence across generations. Using examples of firms that flourished and those that failed, they describe the practices that characterize entrepreneurial individuals, families, and organizations and offer pragmatic advice that can be tailored to your unique situation.

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.

This book documents the distinctive experiences and challenges of Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Asia. By assessing succession and innovation in SMEs as the two sides of a coin, this book explains how innovations are essential to SMEs in succession. With detailed case examples, the book provides generalized solutions for SMEs to answer the question of how to make succession and innovation simultaneously successful. The authors discuss the potential solutions to solve the challenges of SMEs on succession and innovation by considering the utilization of the capital market, the electronic commerce strategy, the international strategy, and angel investment to pursue portfolio entrepreneurship, and compare these Asia solutions to the experiences from Europe. The book is recommended for family business and SME owners, professionals serving these firms, and the consulting firms that work on continuity issues of SMEs in Asia.