Product Description

Generation to Generation presents one of the first comprehensive overviews of family business as a specific organizational form. Focusing on the inevitable maturing of families and their firms over time, the authors reveal the dynamics and challenges family businesses face as they move through their life cycles. The book asks questions, such as: What is the difference between an entrepreneurial start-up and a family business, and how does one become the other? How does the meaning of the business to the family change as adults and children age? How do families move through generational changes in leadership, from anticipation to transfer, and then separation and retirement? This book is divided into three sections that present a multidimensional model of a family business. The authors use the model to explore the various stages in the family business life span and extract generalizable lessons about how family businesses should be organized.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #199258 in Books
• Published on: 1997-01-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.20" h x 6.44" w x 9.50" l, 1.41 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Booklist
The authors claim that between 65 to 80 percent of all businesses worldwide are family owned or managed, including up to 40 percent of the Fortune 500. Yet most of what we read about family businesses are sensational accounts of blood feuds and internecine battles over money and control. This study takes a more analytical look at what makes family firms different from other corporations; it grew out of the authors' collaboration at the Owner Managed Business Institute, where they worked on an ongoing project for Caterpillar, Inc., that began more than a dozen years ago. Now a multinational conglomerate, Caterpillar began as a family firm, and many of its products are distributed through family-operated dealerships. From that work, the authors developed a model that looked at these businesses from three different aspects: ownership, family, and business. They also identified four classic family-business types and here address the management issues that arise as firms evolve from one type to the next. David Rouse

Book Info
Explores the special dynamics and challenges the family businesses face as they move through their life cycles. Provides an original developmental model for understanding and managing patterns of change in family firms. DLC: Family-owned business enterprises - Management.

About the Author
Ivan Lansberg is an organizational psychologist who grew up in a family business.