Scott Family Enterprises (A): Defining Fair Process for Cousin Owners

Author(s):  
John L. Ward ◽  
Canh Tran

A large family business in banking and ranching is shifting leadership to the next generation and has developed a protocol to select board members by consensus. However, when the selection occurs, it is not made in accordance with the protocol, and a third-generation family member questions why the selection rules were changed by second-generation members without input or vote. Highlights the growing pains of developing fair processes and guidelines for nominating and selecting board members, meeting family expectations, communicating with constituents, and encouraging active roles in governance at the cousin-stage of a family business.

Author(s):  
John L. Ward

Plymouth Tube, a family business, was a manufacturer of precision tubing and extruded shapes for aerospace, desalination, medical, mining, energy, and water industries globally. Founded in 1924, as of 2012 it employed 770 people at thirteen plants in seven U.S. states and had sales of about $240 million. The family had twenty members across three generations, including spouses. The board was composed of eight members, three from the family and five who were independent. Stacy, age 30, was the only fifth-generation family member working for the company. Her father, Van, age 64 and a fourth-generation member, had been in the business for forty years and had succeeded his father as president, CEO, and chairman. In early 2013, management presented a very large expansion project that was riskier than previous recent investments to the board, and requested the board's approval. Independent board members asked Van to obtain feedback from the family about the proposal. Van asked Stacy to direct the process for informing the family, asking for their input, and communicating it back to the board. How should Stacy conduct the process? What should be done with the information once it has been gathered? Should family members be involved in this type of business decision? Based on the information given in the case, is this a good investment?


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-32
Author(s):  
Daniel Degravel ◽  
Christina Hui Min Tun

Burma Drinx Group, a large family-owned conglomerate in Myanmar, an Asian country in economic and political transition, is about to reinvent itself to achieve success and adaptation to its evolving context. Based on internal and external information about the firm, the case states the challenges and issues that Burma Drinx Group (thereafter BDG) is experiencing as a family-owned conglomerate operating in a ‘non-friendly’ business environment and in a turbulent political and economic context. It focuses on the group CEO Aung Win’s succession. The reader is invited to understand the specificities of BDG’s internal environment, and to manage the idiosyncrasies of this family business conglomerate regarding CEO Win’s succession. Beyond the succession issue, BDG’s decision-makers face critical challenges for the future and have to make bold and courageous decisions to build on the success of the organization. The case proposes a consulting-case style where analysis and reflection are required to understand the challenges and to provide relevant solutions to the top management of the company. Material from the academic literature about succession is offered as a resource to the reader.


1991 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc A. Schwartz ◽  
Louis B. Barnes

The debate over the usefulness of outside board members in family businesses goes on. Two of the three empirical studies on this issue tend to disagree on their value. Using a sample of 262 family business firms, drawn from the Business Week Newsletter for Family-Owned Businesses, this study surveyed CEOs to learn of their attitudes toward inside and outside board members. The findings strongly support the inclusion of outsiders and suggest that the more outside board members the better and the more inside family members the worse, but only where CEO desire, careful selection, and shared expectations are part of that outsider membership.


1989 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roderick W. Correll

The author describes his experience as the successor in a family business in a personal statement describing his struggle to differentiate from his family and define his own dream within the business. The impact of his developmental journey on decisions made in the business, and vice versa, is depicted in detail.


2004 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Denison ◽  
Colleen Lief ◽  
John L. Ward

Through years of consulting experience and culture research, a fuller picture of family firms began to emerge. It became increasingly clear that family business sustainability and accomplishment were rooted in something deeper, something beyond superficial explanation. Belief in the innate value and uniqueness of family business culture drove collaboration on this project between the disciplines of family business and organizational behavior. The goal was to critically examine family business culture and performance relative to nonfamily firms. The Denison Organizational Culture Survey, a cultural assessment tool that has linked corporate culture to financial performance, was administered to a sample of 20 family businesses and 389 nonfamily businesses, allowing us to compare their cultures. The results showed that the corporate cultures of family enterprises were more positive than the culture of firms without a family affiliation. Family enterprises scored higher on all 12 dimensions of the assessment tool. Despite the small sample, several of these differences were statistically significant. This suggests that family firms perform better because of who they are. In addition, recent research that shows they also perform better because of what they do strategically. Their histories and shared identities provide a connectedness to time-tested core values and standards of behavior that lead to bottom-line success.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
Fei Zhu ◽  
Haibo Zhou

ABSTRACT Whereas the existing literature on the relationship between parental behavior and family business succession mainly focuses on parental behavior in the business domain, we highlight the importance of parental behavior in the family domain. Integrating attachment theory, the family business succession literature, and person-job fit literature, our study proposes a theoretical framework hypothesizing that general self-efficacy and perceived person-job fit mediate the association between perceived parental care (an underrepresented family-domain-specific parental behavior) and next-generation family members’ succession intentions. This framework is tested by data from two surveys and further verified by qualitative interviews of next-generation family members. Multivariate analysis results suggest that next-generation family members’ general self-efficacy and perceived person-job fit played a sequential-mediating role in the relationship between perceived parental care and next-generation family members’ succession intentions. Our interviews not only confirm these results but also reveal new insights, particularly into the specific Chinese context in the study of family business succession.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Watiri Muigai ◽  
Edward Mungai ◽  
S. Ramakrishna Velamuri

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to examine the effects of perceived parental entrepreneurial rewards, or PPERs (i.e. the offspring's perception of the degree of parental success in entrepreneurship), on the corporate venturing (CV) mode of entrepreneurial entry and the interaction effects of family business involvement (FBI) and formal employment on the association between PPER and CV by the next-generation family members.Design/methodology/approachA survey was administered to a sample of 738 small business owners in Kenya; of which, 440 small business owners were selected because they grew up in a family business context. A probit model was used to examine the main and interaction effects.FindingsPPERs significantly influenced CV. FBI improves the positive relationship whereas formal employment reduces the effects of PPER on CV.Practical implicationsFamilies in business need to improve conversations with their children to include discussions concerning the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards of running a family business, which may shape not only the entrepreneurial entry path of their offspring but also the willingness to establish businesses that may grow and lead to continuity of the family business of origin.Originality/valueThe study investigates the effect of being embedded in a business family in shaping the CV mode of entrepreneurial entry by the next-generation family members who may not, on the one hand, find independent own founding an attractive option and for whom, on the other hand, the succession mode of entry may not be an option.


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