The Endurance of Family Businesses
A Global Overview

A collection of essays offering an overview of the importance and resilience of family-controlled large businesses.

Paloma Fernandez Perez (Edited by), Andrea Colli (Edited by)

9781107037755, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 September 2013

308 pages, 10 b/w illus. 10 tables
23.1 x 15.5 x 3.3 cm, 0.57 kg

'Comprehensive and detailed, this is a definitive, up-to-date, scholarly resource for family business historians and field practitioners alike … This book presents many interesting hypotheses and frameworks. It makes an excellent scholarly case for what business families and their advisors want and need: institutions that make more and bigger investments in the field of family business studies. In the past, critics claimed that only families in business stand to benefit from this research. The facts in this book put that argument to rest once and for all. A better understanding of family business will not only be good for every country where these economic activities thrive but will be essential for sustaining the global economy.' John A. Davis, Chairman, Cambridge Institute for Family Enterprise

The Endurance of Family Businesses is a collection of essays offering an overview of the importance and resilience of family-controlled large businesses. Much of economic and business history research neglects family businesses, considering them an inefficient form of business organization. These essays discuss the strengths of family businesses: the ways family firms have managed, financed and governed their corporations, as well as the way in which they structure their relationship with the external environment, from the government to the company's stakeholders. Family businesses have learned new ways of organizing their resources and using their accumulated know-how for new markets and institutional environments. This volume combines the expertise of well-known scholars who specialize in business history, economic history, management and consulting, to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on family businesses. Contributors provide a global view by taking into account Asian, American and European experiences.

Introduction: a global revolution: the endurance of large family businesses around the world Paloma Fernandez Perez and Andrea Colli
Part I. Theoretical Issues and Debates: 1. The emergence of family business studies: a historical approach to pioneering centers, scholars, and ideas Paloma Fernandez Perez and Nuria Puig
2. Family firm longevity: a balancing act between continuity and change Pramodita Sharma and Carlo Salvato
3. Family values or crony capitalism Harold James
4. Risk, uncertainty, and family ownership Andrea Colli
Part II. Exogenus Factors: The Environment: 5. Entrepreneurial spirit in the evolution of Swedish family businesses Hans Sjögren
6. Cultural forces in large family firm persistence: a model based upon the case project Vipin Gupta
7. Family firms and the new multinationals: evidence from Spain Mauro F. Guillén and Esteban Garcia Canal
8. Finance and family-ness: a historical overview of assessing the economics of kinship Christopher Kobrak and Pramuan Bunkanwanicha
Part III. Endogenous Determinants: Inside the Black Box: 9. The women of the family business Christine Blondel and Marina Niforos
10. The role of values in family-owned firms Remei Agulles, Lucia Ceja and Josep Tàpies
11. Managing professionalization in family business: transforming strategies for managerial succession and recruitment in family firms in the twentieth century Susanna Fellman.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], General & world history [HBG]