Entrepreneurial%20Learning%20Between%20and%20Across%20the%20Generations%20in%20Family%20Businesses

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• Entrepreneurial Learning Between and Across the
  Generations in Family Businesses
• Kawartha Family Business Group
• February 25, 2013
• Michael Konopaski PhD Thesis
• Lancaster University Management School
  Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise
  Development

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• The Study
• 40 family business case studies from Peterborough
  (and within 40 km)
• Participants are from 40 different family
  businesses
• For most of the participants, it was the first
  time in their lives they had reflected on the
  questions in the interview

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• Methodology
• Interviews with Transcription
• Grounded Theory followed by Quantitative Analysis

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• Sampling passage from thesis

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• The Main Research Question how do individuals
  in a family business learn to sustain growth and
  continuity across many generations?

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• Definitions key terms used in the study

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• Entrepreneurship exploring opportunities and
  mobilizing resources
• Learning acquiring new, or modifying existing
  knowledge

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• Intergenerational Learning between two
  generations

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• Transgenerational Learning across many
  generations
• As long as I can remember, I was with my
  grandparents probably just as much as I was with
  my parents. I was always with them as I was
  growing up.

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• Family Business no universally accepted
  definition

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• Familiness the unique bundle of resources and
  capabilities resulting from family involvement in
  a business which
• may lead to competitive advantages

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• Tacit knowledge difficult to transfer to
  another person by means of writing it down or
  talking about it. Requires extensive personal
  contact, regular interaction and trust

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• Sharing Tacit Knowledge
• One day I realized that the person I was
  complaining to was the person I was complaining
  about.

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• Situated Learning Theory Learning that takes
  place in the same context it was applied.

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• A student from Peterborough can learn accounting,
  banking or law at various universities in
  Ontario. This is cognitive learning.
• A student from Peterborough can learn accounting,
  banking or law by working at big firms on Bay
  Street in Toronto. This is experiential learning.
• A student from Peterborough can learn accounting,
  banking or law by working with small and medium
  sized businesses in Peterborough. This is
  situated (learning) and specific to the local
  context.

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• My dad worked six days a week and all the other
  kids dads were home at 5 oclock, supper at 5
  oclock every day and that just didnt happen in
  our household. He was gone at 730 in the morning
  and came home at 6 or 7 at night and worked
  Saturdays. If you wanted to see him I rode in the
  truck with him.

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• Can you relate to the quote from the previous
  slide?
• All family members from family businesses all
  over the world should be able to relate to a
  similar sort of experience
• The next slide is the actual quote from the
  participant which shows the importance of
  context.

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• My dad worked six days a week and all the other
  kids in our neighbourhood, most of their dads
  worked at GE. So their dads were home at 5
  oclock, supper at 5 oclock every day and that
  just didnt happen in our household. He was gone
  at 730 in the morning and came home at 6 or 7 at
  night and worked Saturdays. If you wanted to see
  him I rode in the truck with him.

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• Legitimate Peripheral Participation Describes
  how newcomers become experienced members and
  eventually replace old timers in a business

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• Someone once told me that a PhD is essentially a
  flow chart of hundreds of boxtobox
  relationships that leads to the development of
  original theory
• The following concepts take into account existing
  theory, and put new boundaries on prior theory
  (supported by the data)
• The point of a PhD study is to add new knowledge
  to an existing field of study

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• Themes Recurring patterns in the data across
  most of the cases

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• Socialization at a young age
• When the family goes to the Farmers Market at
  four oclock in the morning, you dragged the kids
  along. You didnt leave them at home. Well, what
  am I doing while Im there? Well, I can learn to
  take money.

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• Legitimate Peripheral Participation
• Some of these little kids grow up to become
  members. On the other hand, youve got your older
  members that are dying off and thats kind of
  sad. A lot of the older ones, especially when I
  was in my twenties, my dads friends, were almost
  like my parents. Then when they started dying, oh
  God another parent.

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• Reverse Mentoring
• Whats grown in the last five or six years, is a
  new way between what hes done in the past
  because technologys played such a huge part in
  our business. We have two projects where were
  having renderings done in Shanghai right now.

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• A Debt to the Past
• My grandfather was the second of seven kids. So
  he was the second oldest. Back in those days, the
  hierarchy, the oldest son got the family business
  which was the farm, which was the producing, the
  farm north of here. So my grandfather, being the
  second, got the sheep pasture to the south.

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• The gunshot treaty was 1809, which the British
  signed with the Ojibwa and gave them land north
  of Lake Ontario as far as you could hear a
  gunshot.

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• The Intergenerational Present
• In the past 30 years of doing this, we have
  developed ways, formulas, patterns. Say you are
  going to hire someone to put new windows in a
  cottage, right? Were doing a job together and
  were hiring together to put windows in. So each
  guy has a different way of doing it and there are
  different ways of doing the same thing, right?
  But weve developed our way of doing it that we
  know works, based or our 30 years of doing it. So
  we have a book of how to do everything and
  anything. Thats our family recipe.

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• We had a 50 year reunion here at the farm, and
  we gave out awards for businesses. We gave out
  certificates for 50 years that this business had
  done business and we had 40 year ones and down to
  25. We told stories about dealing with the
  businesses. We fed 472 people in a sit down meal
  with, with china. No paper plates. Right up here
  in our shop with a tent and we had a party.
  People still talk about it.

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• Transgenerational Future
• Starting with my grandfather, it was like, you
  could take a piece of property and split it up
  amongst the cousins and all the brothers and
  sisters, but I think that it was my grandfathers
  and my dads determination not to piece it up,
  not to sever this off and not to piece that off.
  Keep it whole and keep it for the family members
  that contribute and want to make this their
  vehicle to exist.

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• Learning From Ancestors You Have Never Met
• Theres so much history involved. My great
  grandparents made plans that they wanted to stick
  through the years. Specifically one maple tree
  has to stay in the middle of the field. It was
  one of my great grandfathers wishes so it has to
  stay.

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• Findings

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• The majority of the participants in this study
  have family members actively involved in the
  business that will never retire

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• The most successful businesses are always
  thinking about how the business was influenced by
  family members 50 years back, and also always
  thinking about how the business might look 50
  years forward

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• Family and Business is the Same Thing
• I dont think my daughter realizes that if this
  business loses, that were losing the house and
  cottage. My boys think they can walk in, pick
  something off the shelf and take it.

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• Family and Business is the Same Thing
• passage from thesis

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• Transgenerational learning
• Participants in this study are surrounded by
  their past. In some cases, relations to those
  family members they have never met often have a
  significant impact on how they learn. Also, they
  often make decisions based on those family
  members that have not been born yet.

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• A Critical Approach
• Successful family businesses that contradict
  prior theory

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• Succession Planning
• In their early twenties, I started the process
  of moving them in. And that wasnt done
  arbitrarily. That was done in discussion with
  them saying, if youre showing an interest, here,
  I can make a couple million dollars a year so
  Ill gladly give you 400,000 each of that and we
  can all have some fun.

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• Competition
• We have lunch together every Friday. Im big on
  getting advice from those who have been through
  it, people whove been in the business much
  longer than I have.

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• Implications For Public Policy
• While large, public companies have been reducing
  local labour costs and capital spending (General
  Electric and PepsiCo) or have left the community
  entirely (Johnson Johnson) in recent years, it
  is the family businesses, which have family
  reasons to stay in the community, and a
  commitment to the longterm well being of their
  businesses in the community that should have a
  larger voice in influencing public policy.

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• How Can We Apply Some of These Things in Our
  Family Business?

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• Learn From Different Generations
• I maintain various circles of friends. I keep
  an older circle of friends that used to be 20
  years older than me. Then we became friends with
  our eldest sons friends and my youngest sons
  friends. We have four circles of friends. Through
  that experience, you can slot yourself into where
  you are, where they are, and where were all
  going to be, and you can pick up things that are
  important to them, which may mean absolutely
  nothing to our older friends or things that are
  important to us which means nothing to the
  younger ones.

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• Focus on transfer of entrepreneurial mindset, not
  ownership and control
• Hes always sort of had his ear to the ground
  trying to figure out other opportunities might be
  out there. My first experience here was just
  following him up the road just to have a look at
  it just to see if we could both see the potential
  in it. It was a cold winters day and it seemed
  kind of odd to talk about ________.

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• Write down your family recipe for doing business
• My dad is going to write a book on the history
  of our farms so that we can understand it because
  once he passes away theres a lot of knowledge of
  past generations that goes away with him. Most
  importantly how each generation passed on their
  influences to the next generation and how they
  dealt with transitioning the farm to the next.

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• Develop accelerating streams of wealth across
  many generations
• There are so many different sources of income
  inside our business with the Service Department,
  the Propeller Repair Shop, Boat Top and
  Upholstery, the Machine Shop, the Gas Bar, the
  Service Department

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• Rearrange the physical layout of the family
  business to increase he intensity of interaction
  between key family members
• Wife It would have been a more mixed operation
  and it was basically for sustainability of the
  family. I think they would have produced some
  crops for selling, I guess, but ..
• Husband basically, they were trying to feed
  themselves.

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• As a result of this sharing of tacit knowledge,
  entrepreneurial learning is more fluid between
  two family members in a family business due to
  the many years of common experiences

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• Succession Planning is a Much Longer Cycle
• Achieving continuity between and across
  generations for the family business is a much
  longer cycle which needs to consider not only
  recent history but the distant past, and how the
  distant past affects the far away future
• That is my original contribution. Thank you
  giving me this opportunity.

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• Questions?