Book Reviews
Learning Family Business: Paradoxes and Pathways
Ken Moores and Mary Barrett
ISBN: 978-0-754609-40-7 2003 186 pages Ashgate-Gower Asia Pacific
Jill Thomas
Adelaide Graduate School of Business, University of Adelaide, SA
Finally, a considered Australian exploration of family businesses evaluating how they can learn from and add value to their current activities. Moores and Barrett expose many aspects of the dynamics of the family business which, if managed appropriately, may contribute to the longevity of around 80% of the private business sector, family owned businesses.
Moores and Barrett are both respected researchers in the field and they use their experience to integrate conceptual thinking with practical application. The result is an incisive evaluation of fieldwork data from Australia which is integrated with previous research from around the globe. Learning Family Business offers much to both the academic and the practitioner who read this thought provoking treatment of family business. It highlights the challenges of overlapping systems of the business, the family and the management.
Moores and Barrett review some of the key arguments about the definition of a family business and are careful to point out that their study focuses on second generation and later family businesses. They use an adapted firm life cycle model to discuss they typology of four learning stages of the family business:
- Learning business
- Learning our business
- Learning to lead our business, and
- Learning to let go our business.
At each learning stage, Moores and Barrett highlight paradoxes which family businesses are likely to have to contend with in an environment that often wishes to take the emotion of family out of it. For example, in the first learning stage, it is suggested that there is an inside-outside paradox: 'going outside' (the firm) in order to eventually 'return inside'... is both a vital opportunity for learning and a potential threat to the nature of the business' (p 56). Moores and Barrett comment that family members need to 'go outside anyway', even at the risk of losing the family nature of the firm.
The second learning stage 'Learning our business' has to do with 'valuing the values of that business and the values of the people who had been - and generally still were - associated with creating it' (p 81). 'Having gone outside (to another business) to learn about the inside (of their family business), the new generation are able to reinterpret the value system that they have learned from others before them and to facilitate the family business' (p 85) further development through its life cycle. In doing so, they experience the paradox of finding their family business 'the same, only different' from other businesses.
At each learning stage, Moores and Barrett's research offers pathways for managing the complexities of family business. For example, to come to grips with 'Learning our business', two pathways are suggested: first, that family members maintain the broad philosophies of those who have gone before them rather than the detail of their strategy, and second, that they realise the special market value of a family business.
The third learning stage 'Learning to lead our business' (Ch 5) highlights the requirement of 'perspicacity' for effective family business leadership - 'there is a need for the CEO to be able to work out the demands of various kinds of environmental uncertainty, whether internal or external' (p 103).
Throughout the book, Moores and Barrett illustrate points with direct quotations from their participants/informants/respondents. For example, Chapter 6 'Learning to let go our business' includes some honest reflections about the dangers of 'non-market-based transactions [which] fail to do justice to the hard work of the parent, often the founder of the business... [and] make successors underestimate the value of what they had received' (p 119). The paradox articulated in this final learning stage is that one needs to 'lead' in order to 'let go', a concept that many family business owners struggle with.
For the academics, there are many valuable insights which place family business research in the context of wider research. Academics will also appreciate the evaluation of qualitative data in the context of quantitative research findings about business life cycle stages. For those practitioners and advisors wishing to understand the complexities of the family business, the typology of learning stages links the discussion across the chapters, and provides an appreciation of the challenges one might face at different stages of a firm's maturity.
For those members of family businesses who continually struggle with some of the paradoxes highlighted by Moores and Barrett, this book will comfort you in the knowledge that you are not alone. Whilst not being prescriptive, Learning Family Business will challenge you to think about ways you might improve your day-to-day operations as well as your long-term strategies to make your now successful family business even more successful!
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