Entrepreneurial Essence In Family Businesses

This monograph seeks to identify the mechanism that successfully guides the continuity of the family business through generations. Different perspectives have been used through years: from the identification of the entrepreneurial characteristics to the succession model implemented, and to the educational path for the next generations of entrepreneurs. In this context, the book focuses the attention on the link between different generations of entrepreneurs. In particular, it presents and analyzes the evolutive circle of the family business among generations. This approach permits a holistic view of the intergenerational entrepreneurship within the entrepreneurial families and their businesses. Once intergenerational entrepreneurship has been deeply described, two areas in which the next generation must excel are analyzed: the adaptation to the evolution of the external environment, and the leadership attitude. The author's central message is that evolution happens when the entrepreneurial processes are absorbed by the next generation through the learning of heuristics. Having a leadership style is more than setting a vision, which has to do with strategy and taking important decisions. .

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.

This monograph seeks to identify the mechanism that successfully guides the continuity of the family business through generations. Different perspectives have been used through years: from the identification of the entrepreneurial characteristics to the succession model implemented, and to the educational path for the next generations of entrepreneurs. In this context, the book focuses the attention on the link between different generations of entrepreneurs. In particular, it presents and analyzes the evolutive circle of the family business among generations. This approach permits a holistic view of the intergenerational entrepreneurship within the entrepreneurial families and their businesses. Once intergenerational entrepreneurship has been deeply described, two areas in which the next generation must excel are analyzed: the adaptation to the evolution of the external environment, and the leadership attitude. The author's central message is that evolution happens when the entrepreneurial processes are absorbed by the next generation through the learning of heuristics. Having a leadership style is more than setting a vision, which has to do with strategy and taking important decisions.

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.

Family Business and Management: Objectives, Theory, and Practice characterizes the specificity of the functioning of family businesses through the prism of their objectives. It contains both theoretical considerations about the essence of family entrepreneurship and the objectives set by family businesses, as well as the results of a survey conducted among family business managers. The study concerned the objectives of family businesses and made it possible to confront the planned objectives with those actually implemented by these entities. Thanks to this approach, it is possible to assess the effectiveness of management, taking into account both business and non-business (family) aspirations. The classification models created in the course of the analyzes additionally help to organize the population of family businesses and better understand its diversity. The book also shows the impact of succession plans on setting objectives, as well as the importance of the management styles used in the implementation of objectives set by family businesses. This book will be valuable to students at an advanced level, academics, and practitioners. It addresses the topics with regard to management and organizational studies and will be of interest to organizational scholars, consultants, and leaders interested in establishing and realizing goals in family business.

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.

•The editors should be commended for developing a Map of the Landscape of Family Business Outcomes. It gives future research direction to the discipline considering both short-term profitability and long-term sustainability. It considers conventional c

This work commemorates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Italian Association of Family Enterprises (AIDAF). It does not adopt a retrospective perspective, nor is it a historical account. It is an essay about the future, taking the form of a dialogue between family businesses and the Italian academic community, combining scholarly rigor with pragmatism. It provides tangible points of reflection aimed at constructing and subsequently preserving the continuity and sustainability of the family-enterprise system. The dialogue is composed of twenty-five letters and their corresponding responses, organized into five sections: family, ownership, youth, business, and sustainability. The AIDAF-affiliated entrepreneurs pose inquiries on family business matters in the form of letters addressed to academics, who, in turn, provide concise essays in response. These exchanges encompass recurring issues such as generational succession, as well as more contemporary themes, such as sustainability and the management of large entrepreneurial families. The essay is not solely intended for AIDAF members; rather, it has been assembled to initiate a conversation with those who are involved with family businesses, including the new generations, entrepreneurs, managers, and professionals who collaborate with family enterprises, as well as students and enthusiasts of the subject. It is an invitation to those who harbor a curiosity about the world of family business. As in any dialogue, the hope here is to stimulate interest in continuing the exchange of perspectives, experiences, and knowledge, going beyond the pages of this book, and recognizing that the vitality and excellence of the fabric of family enterprises are fundamental for the development of a national system.