The Endurance of Family Businesses A Global Overview

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.

Paloma Fernández Pérez is a Professor in the Department of Economic and Business History at the University of Barcelona. She received one of the first ICREA Academia awards from the Catalan government in 2008 and is in the editorial council of the journals Business History and Investigaciones de Historia Económica. She founded and coordinates the Network of Interdisciplinary Research in Family Firms. Her last book was La última globalización y el renacer de los grandes negocios familiares en el mundo (2012).
Andrea Colli is Professor of Economic and Social History in the Department of Policy Analysis and Public Management at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. He is a member of the Editorial Review Board of Family Business Review. He is the author of Business History: Complexities and Comparisons (with Franco Amatori, 2011).