Family Business on the Couch (ePub)

The challenge faced by family businesses and their stakeholders, is
to recognise the issues that they face, understand how to develop
strategies to address them and more importantly, to create
narratives, or family stories that explain the emotional dimension
of the issues to the family. The most intractable family business
issues are not the business problems the organisation faces, but
the emotional issues that compound them. Applying psychodynamic
concepts will help to explain behaviour and will enable the family
to prepare for life cycle transitions and other issues that may
arise.

Here is a new understanding and a broader perspective on the
human dynamics of family firms with two complementary frameworks,
psychodynamic and family systematic, to help make sense of
family-run organisations. Although this book includes a conceptual
section, it is first and foremost a practical book about the real
world issues faced by business families.

The book begins by demonstrating that many years of achievement
through generations can be destroyed by the next, if the family
fails to address the psychological issues they face. By exploring
cases from famous and less well known family businesses across the
world, the authors discuss entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurial
family and the lifecycles of the individual and the organisation.
They go on to show how companies going through change and
transition can avoid the pitfalls that endanger both family and
company. The authors then apply tools that will help family
businesses in transition and offer their analyses and
conclusions.

Readers should draw their own conclusions from careful
examination of the cases, identifying the problems or dilemmas
faced and the options for improved business performance and family
relationships. They should ask what they might have done in the
given situation and what new insight into individual or family
behaviour each case offers. The goal is to avoid a bitter
ending.