Transforming the Family Business (2225.YR.014666.1)

General information

Type:	OBL	Curs:	1	Period:	S semester
ECTS Credits:	1.5 ECTS

Teaching Staff:

MBA students can take two different, but complementary, family business courses. The first one, FAMILY BUSINESS PERFORMANCE, focuses on those structural elements that create the competitive competence of the business. The second course, TRANSFORMING THE FAMILY BUSINESS, focuses on the necessary transformations that family business must be able to develop throughout generations.

This second course is a continuation of the first one. Approaches family business from an evolutionary perspective, introducing the dimensions of time, change and evolution. Therefore this course is not recommended for student that have not taken the FAILY BUSINESS PERFORMANCE course

Through the course the students are supposed to develop the capacity of:

- Understand the basic family dynamics in a context of power, wealth, freedom and conflicting loyalties.
- Developing the capacity of imagine and execute functional and sensitive processes of change.
- Developing an individual strategy that steer their behavior in the family-business system.

1. 1. Session 1: Family Business Dynamics This session will focus on the internal dynamics of business families, putting special emphasis in how being a business family affects family relationships for the good and for the bad of both family and business.

2. Session 2: Communication This second session is going to address the main instrument for transformation of any type of human organization: communication. Students are going to understand the main concepts that will allow them to make a positive strategic use of language, avoiding the frequent negative games fruit of incompetence or meanness.

3. Session 3: Model Change Sustainability of a family business along time requires the capacity of the family business to change their model. This requires changing structures but also an evolution of family¿s mental model. This session is going to address the main transitions that most family business are going to face during their life.

4. Session 4: Succession Generational transitions require a sophisticated process of convivence between generation in which power migrates from one generation into the next. Theses transitions happens at different levels and different speeds. This session will address how to design and conduct a generational transition.

During the course varied methodologies are going to be used, as conceptual presentations and discussions, personal reflections, and class discussion. Students will understand much better their business family as a result of the course.

Gimeno, A; Baulenas, G. & Comacros, J: (2010) "Family business Models: practical solutions for the business family, Palmgrave MacMillan, London.

Doumpioti, D. (2021) The Story of WE: A New Theory on Couples, Relationships, and Love.

Sen, A. (2009) The Idea of Justice. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts

Van der Heyden,L; Blondel, C.; Carlock, R. (2005) Fair Process: Striving for Justice in Family Business. Family Business Review March 2005 vol. 18 no. 1 1-21

Watzlawick,P., Beavin, J. H., & Jackson, D. D. (1967). Pragmatics of human communication: A study of interac-tional patterns, pathologies, and paradoxes (pp. 48-71). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. (Chapter 2)

Sen, A. (2009) The Idea of Justice. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts