United by diversity

摘要

Family companies come in many guises.In a paper published Last year Soumodip Sarkar, of the University of Evora, and two colleagues identified 200 different definitions. Some people use the term as a synonym for a small company, for others it means a closely held company. This special report will define family companies as those with families as either owners or managers or a combination of the two. They mustinvolve more than one family member, and there has to be a succession, or a planned succession, from one generation to another. In a new book, "The Family Business Map", Morten Bennedsen, of insead, and Joseph Fan, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, explain that this basic model comes in four main flavours.