Managing in a Time of Great Change

CHAPTER FOUR

Managing the Family Business

THE MAJORITY OF BUSINESSES everywhere—including the United States and all other developed countries—are family-controlled and family-managed. And family management is by no means confined to small and medium-sized firms—families run some of the world’s largest companies. Levi Strauss, for instance, has been family-controlled and family-managed since its inception a century and a half ago. DuPont, controlled and managed by family members for 170 years (since its founding in 1802 until professional management took over in the mid-1970s), grew into the world’s largest chemical company. And two centuries after a still obscure coin dealer began to send out his sons to establish banks in Europe’s capitals, ...