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  • 2021
  • Book

Harvard Business Review Family Business Handbook: How to Build and Sustain a Successful, Enduring Enterprise

By: Josh Baron and Rob Lachenauer
  • Format:Print
  • | Pages:320
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Abstract

Navigate the complex decisions and critical relationships necessary to create and sustain a healthy family business--and business family. Though "family business" may sound like it refers only to mom-and-pop shops, businesses owned by families are among the most significant and numerous in the world. But surprisingly few resources exist to help navigate the unique challenges you face when you share the executive suite, financial statements, and holidays. How do you make the right decisions, critical to the long-term survival of any business, with the added challenge of having to do so within the context of a family? The "HBR Family Business Handbook" brings you sophisticated guidance and practical advice from family business experts Josh Baron and Rob Lachenauer. Drawing on their decades-long experience working closely with a wide range of family businesses of all sizes around the world, the authors present proven methods and approaches for communicating effectively, managing conflict, building the right governance structures, and more. In the "HBR Family Business Handbook" you'll find: A new perspective on what makes family businesses succeed and fail; A framework to help you make good decisions together; Step-by-step guidance on managing change within your business family; Key questions about wealth, unique to family businesses, that you can't afford to ignore; Assessments to help you determine where you are--and where you want to go; Stories of real companies, from Marchesi Antinori to Radio Flyer; Chapter summaries you can use to reinforce what you've learned. Keep this comprehensive guide with you to help you build, grow, and position your family business to thrive across generations.

HBR Handbooks provide ambitious professionals with the frameworks, advice, and tools they need to excel in their careers. With step-by-step guidance, time-honed best practices, real-life stories, and concise explanations of research published in Harvard Business Review, each comprehensive volume helps you to stand out from the pack--whatever your role.

Keywords

Family Business; Entrepreneurship; Family and Family Relationships; Outcome or Result; Business Model; Conflict and Resolution; Organizational Culture

Citation

Baron, Josh, and Rob Lachenauer. Harvard Business Review Family Business Handbook: How to Build and Sustain a Successful, Enduring Enterprise. Harvard Business Review Press, 2021.
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About The Author

Josh Baron

Strategy
→More Publications

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    • February 21, 2025
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    How a Company’s Ownership Model Shapes the Mistakes It Makes

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    Why Companies Thrive Or Die: Ownership and the Path to Perpetuation

    By: Josh Baron
    • May 11, 2020
    • Harvard Business Review (website)

    Steer Your Family Businesses Through an Unplanned Transition

    By: Josh Baron and Nick Di Loreto
More from the Authors
  • How a Company’s Ownership Model Shapes the Mistakes It Makes By: Josh Baron
  • Why Companies Thrive Or Die: Ownership and the Path to Perpetuation By: Josh Baron
  • Steer Your Family Businesses Through an Unplanned Transition By: Josh Baron and Nick Di Loreto
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