Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
18502000
Andrea Colli
Universita Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, Milan
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP, United Kingdom
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, CB2 2RU, UK
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477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
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Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa
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c
The Economic History Society 2003
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Introduction page 1
1 Family business: nature and structure 6
In search of a definition: quality and quantity 8
Changing perspectives on family firms 22
2 Geographical, sectoral, and dimensional
distribution of family firms 27
Stages of the industrialisation process 28
Industry typology 32
Financial systems 34
Institutional framework 35
Culture 41
Families, firms, and ideologies 45
3 Family firms in the era of managerial enterprise 49
Which role for family firms? The traditional
view 50
Which role for the family firm? Toward a new
perspective 58
Old problems, open questions: leadership
succession, corporate governance, and path
dependence 65
4 Conclusions 73
Bibliographical essay 77
Bibliography 85
Index 98
v
1
Family business: nature and
structure
6
Family business: nature and structure 7
Displaced from middle management, the owners soon also lost their
role at the top of the firm. As the growth of the corporation de-
manded more investment and financial resources, the shift from
personal, family capitalism to financial capitalism, where bankers
and other financiers shared top management decisions, occurred
(1980: 13). In the end, however, given the growing complexity of
the activities undertaken by the new, modern enterprises, the man-
agers themselves were ultimately responsible for resource allocation
and the most relevant strategic decisions. Quoting Chandler again:
My persisting view is that future prospects for family enterprises are not
optimistic. The first reason for my rather pessimistic outlook is that suc-
cessful family enterprises . . . are the exception rather than the rule. Also,
even successful family enterprises find it difficult to have continued success
over long periods of time owing to the problem of continually finding and
training new and capable top managers from within the family. The same
problem exists to an even greater degree with less successful family enter-
prises. These two issues . . . strengthen the argument that family enterprises
are intrinsically limited in their future prospects.
(2001: 179)
The family (and the cultural and hence legal concept of family)
is quite variable too. The European extended families of the early
industrial period were in fact more similar in their economic be-
haviour to their counterparts today in Asia, India, the Far East or
Africa, or to the Italian subcontracting family firm of the industrial
districts, than to the present modern nuclear Western family. Jurgen
Kocka emphasises, in his studies on the rise of the modern German
corporation, the role of both family and bureaucratic culture in
shaping the structure of the giant corporations (Kocka 1971, esp.
pp. 136ff.). Hence, there are diverse structures to the family firm,
and the need for different definitions. Very broadly, a family firm
presents jointly the three elements of: kin (as defined accordingly
within a particular cultural framework), property (the ownership of
a significant fraction of the enterprises capital), and control (au-
thority over the strategic management of the company).
Mark Casson suggests splitting the definition into two parts
family-owned and family-controlled firms. This means that:
a firm is said to be family owned when family members own sufficient voting
shares, or occupy sufficient places on the board of directors, to determine
the appointment of the general manager or chief executive. A firm is said to
be family controlled when the general manager is a member of this family.
The definition of family ownership implies that the ownership of a signif-
icant minority stake by a single family does not necessarily qualify a firm
to be a family firm . . . the stake . . . must be large enough to block any rival
coalition of shareholders. The definition of family control refers to family
members occupying key positions in management.
(Casson 2000: 199)