The Modern Family Business Relationships, Succession and Transition

by Collins, Lorna; Grisoni, Louise; Tucker, John; Seaman, Claire; Graham, Stuart; Fakoussa, Rebecca; Otten, Dominique

• ISBN13: 9780230297913
• ISBN10: 0230297919
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-06-19
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Family businesses constitute over 70% of all business world-wide and while much attention has been focused on those with large turnovers, huge numbers of employees and dynastic ownership, very little research has considered the myriad and diversity of the majority. In addition, the accepted nature of the "family" in business, that is traditional in view and classic in definition, seems to lag behind our modern concept of the extended, complicated and diverse character of the "family". Focusing on these two gaps, this book considers smaller family-owned businesses which have features that have often been neglected. It aims to highlight the gaps in our understanding of the modern family business and through the use of four case studies illuminates the "family" aspects of business which makes these businesses unique.

Author Biography

Lorna Collins is leader of the Bristol Family Business Research Cluster at Bristol Business School, UK. She is also co-founder of the UK Family Business Alliance and is the co-editor of the Journal of Family Business Management. Louise Grison is Head of the Department for Business and Management at Oxford Brookes University, UK. Louise is a specialist in organizational behaviour and organization studies, and she is a member of the Bristol Family Business Research Cluster. Claire Seaman is Senior Lecturer at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, UK, where she co-founded the Scottish Forum for Family Business Research. She has published extensively in the area of family business, including work on the strategies family businesses adopt to access network, family businesses within Scotland's minority ethnic communities and how family businesses contribute to economic growth and development. Stuart Graham is a senior academic lecturing and researching in marketing and strategic management at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, where he was a co-founder of the Scottish Forum for Family Business Research. His main interests in family businesses centre upon the manner in which they use marketing and their strategizing processes. Dominique Otten is a PhD student researcher at the Witten Institute for Family Business in Germany. She is leader of a research project investigating women in family businesses. Rebecca Fakoussa is a PhD student researcher at Southampton Business School, UK. Her main research interests are cross-cultural issues for family businesses; and women and boards of directors in family businesses. John Tucker is a leading expert, consultant and educator in the field of family business in the UK. He is a director of the International Centre for Families in Business, which he founded in 2005.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. vi
List of Tables	p. vii
Foreword	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgements	p. xii
Notes on Authors	p. xvi
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms	p. xvi
Introduction	p. xviii
The Scholarly View of the Modern Family Business
The Family Business	p. 3
What is the Contribution of the 'Family' to the Modern Business	p. 45
The Real Modern Family Business
Brothers in Arms: The Story of Thorntons-A Study into the Relationships between Brothers Working in Senior Management in a Large UK Chocolate Manufacturer	p. 83
Daughters in Charge: Issues and Pathways of Female Leadership Succession in German Family Businesses	p. 107
Fathers and Daughters	p. 158
Brothers in Business: The Pakistani Family Business in the UK	p. 179
Harmonizing the Family Business: Deconstructing the DNA of the Family Business	p. 210
Index	p. 227
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.