| Course Description |
The Managing Family Firm class is for students interested in understanding how family firms power economies around the world, with a degree of complexity far superior to non-family companies. This course dives into those complexities head-on.
Anchored in the four managerial functions (planning, organizing, leading, and controlling) the class explores how each is transformed when a family and its dynamics enter the equation. What makes this course distinctive is its perspective: students will examine planning, organizing, and controlling through the lens of their own leadership role as next-generation members, learning how to engage senior family, boards, and non-family executives with confidence.
This is a course for those who will end up in operations or at the board level, where clarity about roles, strategy, and accountability is essential. We take on the hardest conversations that families often avoid: negotiating your entry into the business, defining responsibilities, structuring compensation, building accountability, and even making decisions about hiring and firing. These are not abstract issues: they are the very discussions that shape whether a family firm thrives or fractures. Students will learn both the tools to navigate these negotiations when they do want to join, and the skills to engage with confidence if they are uncertain or hesitant because these conversations feel too difficult.
At the same time, the course positions these tough conversations as a pathway to building a competitive advantage as owning family. Through the resource-based view (familiness), students will see how addressing, or avoiding, these issues can create or destroy competitive advantage. They will explore how to align family values with business priorities, and how to embed impact into strategy by addressing not only profit but also people and planet. Students will also wrestle with the some of the most common paradoxes that contribute to family firms’ complexity: tradition vs. innovation, entrepreneurship vs. professionalization, family vs. non-family talent; and learn how to turn them into sources of long-term strength.
Pedagogically, this is a hands-on, case-based course enriched by a live case with a family firm leader who brings the realities of operating ownership into the classroom. With rigorous frameworks, practical exercises, and guided reflection, students will leave prepared to lead strategic conversations, manage complexity, and make thoughtful decisions in the family firm context, wheth |
