Are Family Businesses a Good Environment for Project Management?

2022 ◽  
pp. 1054-1081
Author(s):  
Filippo Ferrari
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
Project Management ◽  
Operations Management ◽  
Family Firms ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Family Businesses ◽  
Organizational Influences ◽  
Technical Requirements ◽  
Unique Nature ◽  
Good Environment

Relationships between project management, operations management, and organizational strategy are well-known, as well as organizational influences on project. Family businesses work on projects, but their unique nature makes family firms a challenging context for Project Management. This chapter aims to present and discuss the specific dynamics of family business that can impact project management practices. By definition, a project is a complex system, consisting of a set of dozens of interrelated sub-processes. As is known, the percentage of projects that satisfy both technical requirements, budget compliance and which meet the deadlines, is extremely low. This fact forces the researchers to equip themselves with more sophisticated tools to face the complexity of a project, in order to increase its chances of success.

Are Family Businesses a Good Environment for Project Management?

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-123
Author(s):  
Filippo Ferrari
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
Project Management ◽  
Operations Management ◽  
Family Firms ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Family Businesses ◽  
Organizational Influences ◽  
Technical Requirements ◽  
Unique Nature ◽  
Good Environment

Relationships between project management, operations management, and organizational strategy are well-known, as well as organizational influences on project. Family businesses work on projects, but their unique nature makes family firms a challenging context for Project Management. This chapter aims to present and discuss the specific dynamics of family business that can impact project management practices. By definition, a project is a complex system, consisting of a set of dozens of interrelated sub-processes. As is known, the percentage of projects that satisfy both technical requirements, budget compliance and which meet the deadlines, is extremely low. This fact forces the researchers to equip themselves with more sophisticated tools to face the complexity of a project, in order to increase its chances of success.

Stakeholder Perceptions of Culture and Management Practices in Family and Family Firms - A Preliminary Report

1997 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernesto J. Poza ◽  
Theodore Alfred ◽  
Anil Maheshwari
Keyword(s):  
Family Business ◽  
Preliminary Report ◽  
Family Firms ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Family Businesses ◽  
Family Ownership ◽  
Business Culture ◽  
Stakeholder Perceptions ◽  
Communication Processes ◽  
Succession Processes

The research reported here represents part of an on-going project. Family businesses participating in the Partnership with Family Business at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, completed questionnaires that explored family and business culture and practices. The completed questionnaires show that CEOs generally perceived the practices, cultures, and succession processes more favorably than both other family members and non-family managers. The questionnaires indicate important relationships between family and family-firm cultures, suggesting the importance of intervention approaches that address the whole system of family and business. Non-family managers' perceptions of family firms differ, posing challenges to the full1 utilization of their capabilities. Age is significant in explaining some of the differences in perceptions within and between family and non-family respondents. Finally, responses indicate that planning practices, communication processes, and the use of boards are influenced by family ownership and are positively related to some features of firm andqor family.

scholarly journals Difficulties in Building Relationships with External Stakeholders: A Family-Firm Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 4557
Author(s):  
Joanna Sadkowska
Keyword(s):  
Project Management ◽  
Family Involvement ◽  
Success Factors ◽  
Family Firms ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Building Relationships ◽  
Key Success Factors ◽  
External Stakeholders

Currently, there is a growing number of businesses which organize their operations in the form of projects. One of the key success factors in the area of project management is building successful relationships with project stakeholders. Using stakeholder theory perspective and looking through the lens of family involvement, the study addresses two research questions: 1. how do family firms perceive the difficulty in building relationships with external stakeholders compared to other project management difficulties; 2. does organizing work in the form of projects redefine the significance of family involvement in the difficulties of building relationships with external stakeholders. To answer these questions, 154 Polish family-owned enterprises, considered as representatives of Eastern European emerging economies, were surveyed. The results indicate that family involvement strongly influences the difficulties in building relationships with external stakeholders, but only in those companies which at the time of the survey were not managing projects. In the firms employing project management practices, only the factor related to increasing the number of employees had a facilitating effect on the studied phenomenon. On the contrary, in the case of family firms not managing projects, the growth in the number of employees increased the difficulty in building relationships with external stakeholders. The findings add to the research on the role of family involvement in building relationships with a firm’s external stakeholders.

scholarly journals Comparison of Human Resource Management in Slovenian Family and Non-Family Businesses

Organizacija ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (6) ◽  
pp. 246-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iztok Kopriva ◽  
Mojca Bernik
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
Human Resource Management ◽  
Human Resource ◽  
Family Firms ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Family Businesses ◽  
Developed Economies ◽  
Internal Relationships ◽  
Special Case

Comparison of Human Resource Management in Slovenian Family and Non-Family BusinessesThe room to reach a competitive advantage in today's dynamic world, companies have in unutilized and even unknown human abilities of own employees. Treatment of people at work in large organizations is well analyzed, but little focus is directed at small and medium-sized enterprises. This is particularly true for family businesses. Small and medium-sized enterprises are largely owned by individual families and are an extremely important part of developed economies. Complexity of internal relationships and interplay between the two systems: families and businesses, which often lead to conflicts in interaction, however, is the reason that many managers and professionals are not willing to work in family businesses. It is justified to set the research question; Are we obligate to treated family businesses as a special case when considering the management of people at work? This paper presents the need to address the family businesses as a special case. In a successful and long living family businesses undoubtedly are closely and carefully working with the employees. It is little known about dealing with people in a Slovenian family businesses and how management practices differ from non-family firms. Based on the study of literature and conclusions from a qualitative empirical study the differences are presented in this article. There are also presented differences in practices of dealing with people at work in foreign and Slovenian non-family and family businesses. At the end there are exposed a good practices of each type of business and recommendations for their use.

scholarly journals What Form of Visibility Affects Earnings Management? Evidence from Italian Family and Non-Family Firms

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanna Gavana ◽  
Pietro Gottardo ◽  
Anna Moisello
Keyword(s):  
Earnings Management ◽  
Family Firms ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Earnings Quality ◽  
Family Businesses ◽  
Firm Age ◽  
Unethical Practices ◽  
Financial Communication ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Financial Press

This paper addresses the issue of financial communication quality by studying the determinants of earnings management practices in family and non-family businesses. Previous literature has highlighted the effect of a company’s size, as a form of visibility, on earnings management practices. This study focuses on the analysis of the relationship between different forms of visibility—exposure to financial press, proximity to the consumer, size of assets, sales and firm age—and earnings quality. The results show that the forms of visibility taken into consideration have a different effect on earnings management practices. Furthermore, they show that family businesses are less likely to resort to these unethical practices, especially in the presence of financial press exposure and proximity of the business to the consumer.

scholarly journals Human resource practices and performance in small Spanish wineries, and their evolution with age and size

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan R. Ferrer ◽  
Silvia Abella-Garcés ◽  
María T. Maza-Rubio
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
Human Resource Management ◽  
Human Resource ◽  
Family Firms ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Family Businesses ◽  
Bayesian Regression ◽  
Human Resource Practices ◽  
Small Family ◽  
Human Resource Management Practices

This research aims to cover the existing gap in knowledge regarding human resource management practices in winery businesses. Three of the most important practices in this field - recruitment and selection, training and development, and remuneration - and their relationship with performance in small family and non-family wineries as well as the differences in those businesses’ behaviours according to their age and size were analysed. The analysis was based on a 2016 database containing 339 Spanish wine sector SMEs, and a multivariate Bayesian regression methodology was applied. The results demonstrate a lower level of human resource management practices in small family businesses and a stronger relationship with performance than in non-family businesses. The results also show that human resource management varies according to the age and size of the company, indicating an inverted U-shaped relationship with size. On the one hand, these results highlight the importance of human resource practices in the environment of a small winery. These practices have not usually been considered as drivers of performance in small family firms. On the other hand, the results can be useful for the managers of such firms, both in the wine industry and in general, as they highlight the human resource practices that could improve the performance of those entities. The paper contributes to filling the existing gap in the literature related to small family businesses.

Green Creativity and New Product Performance from Taiwanese High-Tech Sectors: The Moderating Role of Family Involvement

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (01) ◽  
pp. 41-63
Author(s):  
Yi-Chun Hung ◽  
Hung-Bin Ding
Keyword(s):  
Family Involvement ◽  
Family Firms ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Significant Proportion ◽  
New Product ◽  
Family Businesses ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Environmental Management Practices ◽  
Effective Product ◽  
The Impact

This study examines the influence of green creativity to the green new product performances. Creativity is a key source of organization’s competitive advantage (Barney, 1991) and increases the likelihood of new product success by providing effective product differentiation (Song, 2018). Building on the thesis of Natural Resource-based view (Hart, 1995), we study the impact of green creativity on the performances of green new products. This study also shows that family involvement plays a role in the green performances of family businesses. We pay particular attention to family firms because of two reasons. First, family businesses represent a significant proportion of the corporate sector in both developed and developing countries (Faccio and Lang 2002). Second, family firms have different behavioral patterns when reacting to stakeholders’ pressures (Huaang, Ding, and Kao, 2009; Sharma and Sharma, 2011) for better environmental management practices. This study surveyed 134 family-owned, high-tech manufacturers in Taiwan. The findings show that the green creativity is positively and significantly related to green new product performances. Our analytical results also show that family involvement moderates the relationship between green creativity and green new product performances.

Employer branding and psychological contract in family and non-family firms

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duarte Pimentel
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Psychological Contract ◽  
Family Firms ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Family Businesses ◽  
Employer Branding ◽  
Privately Owned

This study compares the perceptions of employer branding and psychological contract levels of employees of family and non-family firms. Specifically, to better understand the dynamics of family businesses, we assess the extent to which employer branding perceptions have an impact on the employees' psychological contract levels. The empirical evidence is provided by a sample of 165 Portuguese employees (76 from family businesses and 89 from non-family businesses), working in small and medium-sized privately-owned companies. The results confirmed the research hypotheses, suggesting that employees of family companies have higher perceptions of employer branding and psychological contract levels than those of employees of non-family companies, also revealing that employer branding has a positive impact on the psychological contract levels of family firm’s employees.

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