Leadership and Sustainability

This chapter on leadership and sustainability from the first to the second generations of SME Ownership addresses both the leadership and sustainability from the perspective of different generations in family SMEs. Because, sustainable leadership is seen as a key factor of the competitiveness in a family enterprise. Without effective and efficient human capital, the SMEs cannot gain the goals such as growth, internationalization and increasing performance. Generational differences in SMEs may improve the creativity and innovation, providing that the established appropriate management system and strategy. From this viewpoint, this chapter provides an overview of generations, leadership, sustainability and competitiveness about SMEs

Strategizing family business with a Chandlerian perspective on 3Ms: a case study of London Biscuits Berhad in Malaysia

Purpose This paper aims to explore and explain following a generational change, the latter generation in Chinese family firm is seen to apply different innovation strategies to thrive in a competitive environment. The Chandlerian perspective on management, marketing and manufacturing techniques (3Ms), derived from American business historian, Alfred Chandler has shown conclusively that one of a small yet established enterprises in Malaysia, London Biscuits Berhad (LBB) was able to capture a larger market by focusing on strategy and structure. This case study analytically and empirically describes the insights surrounding enterprise development among family small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach By using the longitudinal way to compare the development of family business through time, the historical profiles that were obtained from Malaysia’s companies commission house (Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia) shows how organizational characteristic is often formulated by capitalizing tacit knowledge as a controlled input in the production process while promoting organization capabilities, as generations change. Secondly, findings from the interviews will show how the latter generation of this family firm innovates and adds value in product manufacturing by upgrading its quality, using resources and revitalizing the stages of business cycle. Findings Findings show that enterprise development is influenced by objective setting during generational change. As time goes by, the next generations have a tendency of minimizing risk and maintaining harmony in the family enterprise. The next generation starts to recruit and retain professional staff while contributing innovative ideas toward the enterprise development, in comparison to the founding generation. The findings also show that diversification activities (manufacturing), improvement in domestic and international networking (marketing) and professional management adoption (management) can clearly be seen in the development of LBB. Practical implications This case study traces how organizational and administrative characteristics of a firm are crucial if the enterprise is to capitalize on tacit knowledge and commercialize it through product development. It also clearly indicates that family enterprises may last several generations if the Chandlerian perspective on 3Ms is successfully transferred and practiced among family members. Originality/value The selected case study focuses on the Chandlerian concept, which is the contribution of organization capabilities that foster strategic competition. This is done by investigating a successful enterprise run by a prominent Chinese family in Malaysia, which has gone through generational change. This paper proves that strategizing a family enterprise through the Chandlerian concept of 3Ms can transform a small business into a large and successful multinational enterprise.

Venture capital, control rights, and family enterprise growth

This research explores and explains the path of family enterprise venture capital equity financing from the perspective of endogenous family control rights. We adopted unbalanced panel data on Chinese listed companies from 2007 to 2018. Empirical research shows that there are significant differences in the impact of venture capital on the growth performance of family enterprises and non-family enterprises. Venture capital negatively affects the growth performance of family enterprises, while the negative impact of venture capital on family enterprises is not significant. In addition, family control positively moderates the negative impact of venture capital on family enterprise growth performance.

Investigation of the Effects of Worm Fertilizer on the Yield and Quality of Tobacco

Tobacco which still has a great economic importance in the world and Turkey provides extensive employment opportunities from growing to evaluation stage to a certain part of our people and is produced as a family enterprise for centuries in our various regions. The aim of the study was to determine in the effects of worm fertilizer on Aegean type tobacco yield and some quality parameters. The search was carried out in a farmer field in Saruhanli district of Manisa province in 2019. Saribaglar-407 type tobacco was used as a research material. Experimental design was Randomized Complete Parcel Design with three replications. In this research, plant height (cm), number of the leaves (per/plant), cured leaf yield (kg ha-1), tobacco visual quality, leaf priming position (%), total alkaloid (nicotine) (%), total reducing sugar (%) and chlorine (%) were determined. Plant height, number of the leaves, yield, nicotine, total reducing sugar and chlorine contents were found 126.7 cm, 48 per/plant, 141 kg ha-1, 1.02%, 9.08% and 0.48%, respectively. An increase in the middle stalk position of the plant was recorded with the application of fertilizer and the results were obtained among the appropriate values for tobacco of the Aegean region in terms of chemical composition. Keywords: tobacco, worm fertilizer, yield, nicotine.

Family strains and secrets

During the years following the invention of the double-escapement action, Sébastien became too ill to manage the operations of the firm. With Sébastien indisposed, Jean-Baptiste took a more active role in the inventive work, and in particular with refinements to the double escapement action. Jean-Baptiste’s death in 1826, however, left Sébastien and Pierre deeply uneasy about the future of their family enterprise. Pierre understood that in order to ensure the perennity of the Erard firm he needed a successor, because the workers trained at the London branch would not necessarily be as motivated as would an Erard family member to invest their efforts and capital in the firm. Since Sébastien remained single, and Céleste childless and in any case living in Berlin, far from the family enterprise, Pierre would have certainly felt pressure to marry and found a family. However, Pierre’s homosexuality, kept secret from his family and only recently discovered, made marriage and the subsequent transmission of the family enterprise to a potential heir problematic. When Pierre returned to Paris after his father’s death, he came to the realisation that his father had been a poor manager who left the firm in a disastrous financial state. As a result, Sébastien threatened to close the Paris branch, but in the end maintained it while making drastic reductions in the workforce.

Innovationsmotor Medientechnik – Von der Schreibmaschine zur «Mittleren Datentechnik» bei der Siemag Feinmechanische Werke (1950 bis 1969)

The second half of the 20th century is commonly considered to be a time in which German companies lost their innovative strength, while promising new technologies presented an enormous potential for innovation in the US. The fact that German companies were quite successful in the production of medium data technology and had considerable influence on the development of electronic data processing was neglected by business and media historians alike until now. The article analyses the Siemag Feinmechanische Werke (Eiserfeld) as one of the most important producers of the predecessors to said medium data technologies in the 1950s and 1960s. Two transformation processes regarding the media – from mechanic to semiconductor and from semiconductor to all-electronic technology – are highlighted in particular. It poses the question of how and why a middling family enterprise such as Siemag was able to rise to being the leading provider for medium data processing office computers despite lacking expertise in the field of electrical engineering while also facing difficult location conditions. The article shows that Siemag successfully turned from its roots in heavy industry towards the production of innovative high technology devices. This development stems from the company’s strategic decisions. As long as their products were not mass-produced, a medium-sized family business like Siemag could hold its own on the market through clever decision-making which relied on flexible specialization, targeted license and patent cooperation as well as innovative products, even in the face of adverse conditions. Only in the second half of the 1960s, as profit margins dropped due to increasing sales figures and office machines had finally transformed into office computers, Siemag was forced to enter cooperation with Philips in order to broaden its spectrum and merge the production site in Eiserfeld into a larger business complex.