Book Review: Keeping the Family Business Healthy
Ward, J. L. (2011). Keeping the Family Business Healthy: How to Plan for Continuing Growth, Profitability, and Family Leadership. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. 308 pp. Hardcover. Originally published in 1987 by Jossey-Bass.
Gersick, K. A., Davis, J. A., Hampton, M. M., & Lansberg, I. (1997). Generation to Generation: Life Cycles of the Family Business. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. 302 pp. Hardcover.
Miller, D., & Le Breton-Miller, I. (2005). Managing for the Long Run: Lessons in Competitive Advantage From Great Family Businesses. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. 310 pp. Hardcover.
Read the review by Frank Hoy of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, published in the Family Business Review March 2012 issue.
Several books examining family business published in the past 25 years may legitimately be labeled seminal. Some of our earliest exposures were through autobiographies and biographies of well-known families: the Rothschilds, DuPonts, Fords, and others. Consultants such as Léon Danco, Gerald Le Van, and David Bork wrote books describing their observations and recommendations, giving readers perspectives on the relationships between families and their enterprises. In 1987, John Ward was among the first to produce a guide for family firms that was derived from a research base. Keeping the Family Business Healthy: How to Plan for Continuing Growth, Profitability, and Family Leadership proved to be influential to both practitioners and scholars, being reissued and updated.
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