Family Wars

Classic Conflicts in Family Business and How to Deal with Them

by Grant Gordon , Nigel Nicholson

Number of pages: 290

Publisher: Kogan Page

BBB Library: Entrepreneurship, Corporate Success

ISBN: 9780749446307

About the Authors

Grant Gordon : Grant Gordon is the Director General for the Institute for Family

Editorial Review

Family businesses are the backbone of the economy of just about every country on earth, and the wealth of nations depends on them. Many, even most of the major corporations on the planet had family business origins. Understanding family business can unlock one of the greatest and most illusive challenges in the business world. Non-family business have a lot to learn from family firms, because all organizations retain elements of families in every layer of their operations, and capitalizing on their better qualities, while avoiding the worst, can be the key to building competitive advantage through culture.

Book Reviews

"Gordon, director general for the Institute for Family Business, and Nicholson, professor of organizational behavior at the London School of Business, analyze more than twenty family-backed enterprises that involve such names as the Bronfmans, Gallos, and Guinnesses, pointing out what went wrong and what to avoid." Foreword Reviews

"Indeed, they add that the book is designed to show how "quite simple measures and good risk management" would have saved many of the firms they have examined from their unfortunate fates." The Independent

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Wisdom to Share

If the root causes of feuds are not addressed, they can fester beneath the skill and later break out and spread with renewed vigor, like an untreated infection.

Families need to beware of the nature of the times they are living in and their demands.

Perhaps one of the saddest features of the family wars is that over and over again bad blood breeds bad blood.

In a family when a parent and child ally against the other child, the scene is set for serious conflict.

Parents play a big part; often unwittingly fueling, the potential for conflict by how they reward, punish and label their children.

People will go to extraordinary and irrational lengths, to pursue what they believe is right.

Family businesses are the backbone of the economy of just about every country on earth, and the wealth of nations depends on them.

Families need to beware of the nature of the times they are living in and their demands.

Each positive aspect of character has its dark side.

Many of the problems have their roots in the identity of the founder.

In a three-party relationship there is always the possibility of a two-against-one alliance.