A93109 Family Business Management and Governance

At the end of the course the student will be able:

1. to assess the main choices made by family businesses;
2. to design appropriate choices for family businesses. 

In this way, the course contributes to prepare them to take future responsibilities within family firms or to work for family firms within financial institutions and consulting companies. 

Students will know what distinguish a family business from a nonfamily business, what genererates heterogeneity within family firms, what drives the behaviors of family firms and how these behaviors affect performance. In this way, they will develop a critical approach to family businesses: the analysis of past choices and performance will allow them to formulate new choices for better results. 

The course covers the most important challenges facing family businesses (FB), i.e. the following topics. 

1. Definition and diffusion of FB 
2. The performance of FB
3. The governance of FB
4, Competitive strategies of FB 
5. Financial issues in FB 
6. Organizational issues in FB
7. Succession in FB 
8. FB change and Transgenerational Value Creation
 

The course sessions are of two types.

1. The first type of sessions have a traditional format (i.e. lectures). Lectures are based on the textbook and will be enriched by some live testimonials from family firms.

2. In the second type of sessions, under the supervision of the instructor, students are asked to prepare a comprehensive analysis of (a) a family business or (b) of a family business topic. Students are responsible to self-organize in groups, choose a family business or a topic, look for relevant information, analyze the case study and present it to the rest of the class. The knowledge created in this way will be shared at the end of the course and will be part of the collective learning process. 

Students are responsible for consulting on a regular basis the website of the course on “my.liuc.it” where updates and additional materials are posted. No excuse accepted for any failure during the course you may incur into due to a delayed consultation of the website.

For students attending classes, the grade is based on the groupwork preparation and presentation (40%) and an individual written exam on the course contents (60%). 

For students non attending classes, the grade is entirely based on an individual written exam on the contents of the textbook.