Governance

On October 1st, the Global Family Enterprise Program held its inaugural Owners' Day, a milestone event that brought together family enterprise leaders, students, alumni, and experts to explore the evolving role of ownership in today’s world. The event showcased the potential for family enterprises to not only drive economic success but to lead with values and create sustainable, positive change across industries, communities, and generations.

Our spotlight is on the latest groundbreaking work by Sheena Iyengar, the esteemed inaugural S.T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Division at Columbia Business School, and a renowned authority on choice and decision-making.

Young Columbia Business School alumni leaders across the globe and from diverse industries shared their thoughts and insights on how to best position themselves in their family businesses. They also gave students invaluable advice on what they can do now to pave a successful path for themselves at their family businesses in the future.

Entrepreneurs are different from other people. Their talent lies in imagining a new solution or a fresh approach that gives the world something it may not have even realized it needed. Building a successful enterprise from start-up to sustained profitability demands total immersion. 

The claim that most family businesses fail in the third generation is refuted in this study by Thomas Zellwegger and colleagues.

The New Ideas in Family Firms Academic – Practitioner Conference, co-hosted online with Columbia’s Global Family Enterprise Program and INSEAD’s Wendel International Centre for Family Enterprise, took place on May 7, 2021. Leading academic researchers and global practitioners discussed the role of the family enterprise in society, the meaning and potential for ESG practices, and ways that the pandemic has impacted family enterprise advisory work

Written by adjunct professor and managing director Patricia Angus, who has more than 25 years’ experience working with families to create, administer, and benefit from trusts, the Beneficiary Primer is a “go to” resource for anyone who has been named as a beneficiary. 

People are more generous toward single than toward multiple beneficiaries, and encouraging greater giving to multiple targets is challenging.

In “Board Composition and CEO Power,” Professor Tim Baldenius and colleagues study the optimal composition of corporate boards.

Professor Daniel Wolfenzon and colleague provide insights into this form of family firm ownership in “A Theory of Pyramidal Ownership and Family Business Groups.”