Relative success

摘要

Today real power is rarely inherited. Monarchs spend their lives cutting ribbons and attending funerals. Landed aristocrats have to climb the greasy pole if they want to wield serious influence. Even in the United States great dynasties such as the Clintons and Bushes have to go to the trouble of getting themselves elected. The one exception to this lies at the heart of the capitalist system: the family firm. Leading students of capitalism have been pronouncing the death rites of family companies for decades, arguing that fam- ily firms would be marginalised by the arrival of industrial capitalism. They also insisted that the Dallas-style downsides of family ownership would become more destructive: family quarrels would tear these companies apart and the law of regression to the mean would condemn them to lousy management. Most countries have a variation of the phrase "clogs to clogs in three generations". For a long time, they appeared to be right: in both America and Europe, family firms were in retreat for much of the 20th century.