Abstract

Most people have a straightforward vision of the perfect family business. First, they hope for continued strengthening of the company’s financial and market position so it can support the lifestyle and needs of family members, from generation to generation. Secondly, they wish for family harmony. But life gets in the way. Sometimes family members’ short-term or individual needs can overwhelm the needs of the business. In other cases, family members strongly disagree on the strategic direction, or even on the day-to-day management of the business. These family conflicts, when acted out on the stage of the family controlled enterprise, can seem insurmountable. This new book is a follow up companion guide to Family Enterprises: How to Build Growth, Family Control and Family Harmony. The first volume features chapters written and edited by experts from many disciplines and located across the globe to provide the architecture for enduring, continuing family controlled enterprises. This second volume is intended to provide sustenance to those stakeholders committed to the core objectives presented in the title to the first book. It addresses ongoing issues facing both family shareholder control groups and the enterprises they control that surface in ongoing, mature, successful endeavours. The audience for this book is the owners, directors, managers of, and advisers to, family-controlled enterprises and the families that control them. It assumes that such enterprises have been launched – or at least renewed – as expressly family controlled businesses, or other enterprises