Business is all in the familyRecent evidence shows that family-owned businesses outperform their publicly owned counterparts with higher returns on investment, better profit margins, more stable earnings and better cash flow and earnings per employee. Director of the Australian Centre for Family Business (ACFB), Professor Ken Moores has undertaken more than a decade of research to identify the family business advantages that lie at the heart of their superior performance. “While family-owned businesses dominate the commercial landscape of all free enterprise economies, relatively little is known about this form of business endeavour,” said Professor Moores. “These firms have, on occasion, attracted the attention of the popular press but it is invariably because of their ‘dark side’: family feuds that escalate and affect the business operation, frequently ending up in the courts.” Despite this negative press, Professor Moores’ research indicates that there are many bright spots that emerge from families in business. “We have examined in depth how successful family firms engender learning, enabling them to anticipate needs rather than having to react to an emergent crisis,” he said. “Essentially, family business leaders learn their roles in four distinct phases: Learning business, learning our business, learning to lead business and learning to let go. “Learning business and learning to let go are predominately centred on the individual’s specific learning needs at different stages of their careers within family and firm circumstances. “On the other hand, learning our business and learning to lead our business are driven from the firm. These firm-driven needs, influenced by family, then impact on the individual. “A feature of all four learning phases is that each was characterized by a paradox and that the successful family firms had found pathways through these paradoxes.” Professor Moores and the ACFB are now focussing their research on the leadership roles women play in family firms. “Women’s rise to leadership in family business did not come under the spotlight until 1998 and coincidentally one of the early researchers looked at women’s pathways to participation and leadership in the family-owned firm. “The focus of our current research is to see if the pathways to family business leadership by women mirror the pathways found in their previous research.” The Centre’s preliminary results from this study will be presented at international conferences during 2006. Key Project Team Members- Professor Ken Moores AM - Bond University
- Dr Mary Barrett - research fellow ACFB, University of Woollongong
Funding Sources
|
