A thorough explanation of how family enterprises work The family enterprise, whether an operating business, a family office, or both, is the backbone of the US and international economies. These enterprises cut across industries and geographies and can be first-generation entrepreneurial companies or multi-generational businesses with family offices. This book offers a foundation in and understanding of how family enterprises work, including working definitions and the key characteristics of family enterprises, as well as useful concepts for working with and in family enterprises, either as a professional or as a family member. Written by the experts at the Family Firm Institute, a global network of professionals, educators, researchers, and owners of family enterprises An ideal resource for professionals in law, finance, management, and behavioral science, family office and fund managers, and others interested in an multidisciplinary approach to this field

Very few enterprising families focus on building an owner’s mindset in family members. They are busy working and growing their enterprises (rightly so), which prioritizes and values the management role over the ownership role. Many rising generation family members do not choose the path of ownership but are simply born into it. Given these typical patterns, it is not surprising that there is little focus on valuing and building an educated owner to steward the family’s assets for future generations. This book serves as a resource and support tool to help enterprising families learn and develop thoughtful, capable ownership by investing in and nurturing an owner's mindset. This includes building “ownership literacy,” along with a genuine sense of stewardship. It offers a learning structure and approach for each stage of an owner’s development across the lifespan (from earliest years to retirement), taking into consideration the lifecycle stages of the family. The authors make clear that ownership development shouldn’t be confined to earlier ages; any owner at any age can gain ownership-related perspective and skills that can contribute to greater family harmony and business success. The book provides enterprising families and their advisors with examples and practical advice for the promotion of knowledge, skills, and capabilities that incorporate a broad range of topics spanning from personal and interpersonal, to leadership and wealth, to business, ownership, and financial.

Family firms are to be found in every sector of commercial activity. Commitment, family values and pride in the business are typically their special strengths, yet they also face major challenges in reconciling the needs of the business with those of the family. Drawing on the author's extensive experience of working with and advising some of the world's most successful business families, this new and updated edition of Family Enterprises: The Essentials explains the pitfalls, tensions and competing demands that destroy too many family businesses. These problems can be avoided, and Peter Leach reveals the techniques and strategies needed to do so. Running a successful family business is always a huge challenge, but this book offers real insight and guidance on how to keep both business and family united and buoyant.

FAMILY BUSINESS, 3e, INTERNATIONAL EDITION provides the next generation of family business owners with the knowledge and skills needed for the successful management and leadership of the family enterprise. The author, Ernesto Poza, uses both text and cases to explore a diverse set of family firms, examining the interrelationships between the owners, the family, and the management team. FAMILY BUSINESS, 3e, INTERNATIONAL EDITION at its core, is a practical book that presents management and family practices to model success as well as an honest look at the advantages and challenges facing family enterprises. With an emphasis on leadership and positioning for the future, FAMILY BUSINESS, 3e, INTERNATIONAL EDITION illustrates how the family enterprise can achieve sustained growth and continuity through generations.

The challenge faced by family businesses and their stakeholders, is to recognise the issues that they face, understand how to develop strategies to address them and more importantly, to create narratives, or family stories that explain the emotional dimension of the issues to the family. The most intractable family business issues are not the business problems the organisation faces, but the emotional issues that compound them. Applying psychodynamic concepts will help to explain behaviour and will enable the family to prepare for life cycle transitions and other issues that may arise. Here is a new understanding and a broader perspective on the human dynamics of family firms with two complementary frameworks, psychodynamic and family systematic, to help make sense of family-run organisations. Although this book includes a conceptual section, it is first and foremost a practical book about the real world issues faced by business families. The book begins by demonstrating that many years of achievement through generations can be destroyed by the next, if the family fails to address the psychological issues they face. By exploring cases from famous and less well known family businesses across the world, the authors discuss entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurial family and the lifecycles of the individual and the organisation. They go on to show how companies going through change and transition can avoid the pitfalls that endanger both family and company. The authors then apply tools that will help family businesses in transition and offer their analyses and conclusions. Readers should draw their own conclusions from careful examination of the cases, identifying the problems or dilemmas faced and the options for improved business performance and family relationships. They should ask what they might have done in the given situation and what new insight into individual or family behaviour each case offers. The goal is to avoid a bitter ending.

This book offers practical guidance for families moving across generations by sharing practices, skills and activities that can help them along this path. The 50 lessons within can each be read independently, as the family seeks help in dealing with a particular aspect of succession, family conflict, selling a family business, selecting and developing next generation leadership or helping their children manage the benefits of their family wealth by becoming stewards of the family resources. We looks the the potential "wealth" in the family as more than just financial, including spiritual, human, family and societal capital to sustain the family and leave a legacy in the family and for the community.