Family Businesses: for better, for worse.
Professor Carole Howorth, Centre for Family Business
3.00 pm
Two thirds of all firms are family businesses. They include global giants, like Walmart, Fiat, Samsung; local favourites like Booths, Lakeland and Warburtons; they include popular brands, like Haribo, Clarks, but no longer Cadbury, and they probably include your local shop. Research indicates that family firms tend to be more long-lived than non-family firms and a significant number of them have been around for three hundred years or more. The oldest family business in the world was founded in Japan in 578 AD and is currently being run by the 40th generation.
The fundamental difference for family firms is that families are tied together for better and for worse and this means that family and business objectives are always intertwined. A tension can arise because the family is a relationship based system, governed by emotions whereas the business is a performance-driven system founded on 'economically rational' objectives.
How do successful family businesses bring family values into a business environment and make them last for hundreds of years?
Biography
Carole Howorth is Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Business and Director of the Centre for Family Business at Lancaster University Management School. In Debicki et al.'s recent review of family business researchers she was ranked second in Europe. She is a member of the global board for the STEP Project for Family Enterprises and heads up the European group of universities on this project, which brings together leading business families and academics to learn from each other.
Carole is chairing the 10th International Family Enterprise Research Academy conference to be held here in Lancaster in July this year. Her research focuses on entrepreneurship and the performance of family businesses. She has completed a number of studies examining the implications and impact on performance of family businesses balancing the competing objectives and values of family and business.