PROPRIETORIAL CONTROL IN FAMILY FIRMS: SOME FUNCTIONS OF 'QUASI-ORGANIC' MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the strategies of managerial control which are used by the proprietors of family-owned business enterprises. Interviews with the proprietors and senior managers of businesses in the building industry illustrate the ‘quasi-organic’ nature of management structures. These grant some autonomy to senior managers without threatening proprietorial decision-making prerogatives. Although the family firm has certain distinctive features, similar control strategies designed to ensure that delegated decisions are ‘reliable’ and ‘responsible’ are evident in various types of business enterprise. There is, then, scope for further comparative research within a conceptual framework which does not entirely divorce the family firm from other business organizations.     

Class,Entrepreneurship and the Service Sector: Towards a Conceptual Clarification

Opportunities for entrepreneurship within modern economies are concentrated primarily within the service sector. On the basis of recent empirical research this paper develops a conceptual framework which differentiates entrepreneurs according to the relative mix of capital and labour utilised. Four sub-categories within the entrepreneurial middle class are identified and the implications for social mobility on the basis of capital accumulation are explored. In particular, attention is drawn to the significance of employment relationships as a factor which limits the growth of labour-intensive businesses. Despite its neglect within sociological theory the entrepreneurial middle class continues as a significant force within contemporary economies, and several areas for future research are suggested.     

FOCUS: Women in Management: An Empirical Exploration of Ethical Issues

Dr Goffee reviews empirical evidence on the labour market position and work experience of women managers, assesses the kind of work situations which are likely to be perceived by women managers - and, in some cases, their partners and colleagues - as involving an "ethical" dimension, and suggests possible sources of differentiation in the experiences of European women managers which are worthy of further comparative research. The author is Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School.     

Managing authenticity: the paradox of great leadership

Leaders and followers both associate authenticity with sincerity, honesty, and integrity. It's the real thing--the attribute that uniquely defines great managers. But while the expression of a genuine self is necessary for great leadership, the concept of authenticity is often misunderstood, not least by leaders themselves. They often assume that authenticity is an innate quality--that a person is either genuine or not. In fact, the authors say, authenticity is largely defined by what other people see in you and, as such, can to a great extent be controlled by you. In this article, the authors explore the qualities of authentic leadership. To illustrate their points, they recount the experiences of some of the authentic leaders they have known and studied, including the BBC's Greg Dyke, Nestlé's Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, and Marks & Spencer's Jean Tomlin. Establishing your authenticity as a leader is a two-part challenge. You have to consistently match your words and deeds; otherwise, followers will never accept you as authentic. But it is not enough just to practice what you preach. To get people to follow you, you also have to get them to relate to you. This means presenting different faces to different audiences--a requirement that many people find hard to square with authenticity. But authenticity is not the product of manipulation. It accurately reflects aspects of the leader's inner self, so it can't be an act. Authentic leaders seem to know which personality traits they should reveal to whom, and when. Highly attuned to their environments, authentic leaders rely on an intuition born of formative, sometimes harsh experiences to understand the expectations and concerns of the people they seek to influence. They retain their distinctiveness as individuals, yet they know how to win acceptance in strong corporate and social cultures and how to use elements of those cultures as a basis for radical change.     

Women in management: towards a research agenda

Relationships between specific supervisory support behaviours and training transfer among subordinates were investigated in the context of a team-building training programme. Ninety-nine employees who attended outdoor team-building training and their supervisors rated the extent to which trainees transferred each of twenty-one trained skills to the work-place. Additionally, trainees responded to an open-ended question regarding what, if anything, they applied from the training to the work-place. Ratings of transfer, provided by both trainees and their supervisors, and coded responses to the open-ended question indicated that: (1) most trainees transferred only a small to moderate amount of skills from the outdoor training; (2) the amount of training transfer varied across trainees; and (3) skills reportedly transferred the most concerned seeking and listening to the views and ideas of other team members.

Trainees also rated whether their supervisors displayed each of twenty-seven specific supervisory support for training behaviours, derived from a comprehensive list developed by Broad (1982). Partial correlations were computed between each of the twenty-seven supervisory support behaviours and an overall measure of training transfer, controlling for trainees' ratings of the quality of their relationship with their supervisor. This analysis suggested that the supervisory support behaviours most critical for transfer of this team-building training were: (1) supervisors' use of skills and terminology from the training programme; (2) creating opportunities for trainees to make decisions based on newly learned skills; (3) reinforcing trainees' use of trained skills; (4) creating opportunities to practise new skills; and (5) providing feedback on skill use. The implications of these results for training practitioners and researchers are discussed.     

Leading clever people

In an economy driven by ideas and intellectual know-how, top executives recognize the importance of employing smart, highly creative people. But if clever people have one defining characteristic, it's that they do not want to be led. So what is a leader to do? The authors conducted more than 100 interviews with leaders and their clever people at major organizations such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Cisco Systems, Novartis, the BBC, and Roche. What they learned is that the psychological relationships effective leaders have with their clever people are very different from the ones they have with traditional followers. Those relationships can be shaped by seven characteristics that clever people share: They know their worth--and they know you have to employ them if you want their tacit skills. They are organizationally savvy and will seek the company context in which their interests are most generously funded. They ignore corporate hierarchy; although intellectual status is important to them, you can't lure them with promotions. They expect instant access to top management, and if they don't get it, they may think the organization doesn't take their work seriously. They are plugged into highly developed knowledge networks, which both increases their value and makes them more of a flight risk. They have a low boredom threshold, so you have to keep them challenged and committed. They won't thank you--even when you're leading them well. The trick is to act like a benevolent guardian: to grant them the respect and recognition they demand, protect them from organizational rules and politics, and give them room to pursue private efforts and even to fail. The payoff will be a flourishing crop of creative minds that will enrich your whole organization.     

From Wood Panels to Mobile Phones: Strategic Diversification at Sonae Group

This article tells the story of growth and diversification at Sonae, now Portugal's largest company. Publicly quoted but still majority-controlled by its long-standing Chairman and CEO, Belmiro de Azevedo, it was founded in 1959 in the wood products business. It expanded from the 1980s to become the largest retail group in Portugal and has recently taken on the two incumbents in Portugal's mobile telephony market. It won the third license auction in 1997 and achieved a 22% market share within three years. As the biggest part of Sonae's technology investments, the move into mobile telephony played a big part in launching the Sonae share price on a roller-coaster path that has only recently steadied. The Sonae story illustrates the potential importance of long-term charismatic leadership and strategic vision by one person. It also provides insights into the factors that can help diversification to work.     

Why should anyone be led by you?

We all know that leaders need vision and energy, but after an exhaustive review of the most influential theories on leadership--as well as workshops with thousands of leaders and aspiring leaders--the authors learned that great leaders also share four unexpected qualities. The first quality of exceptional leaders is that they selectively reveal their weaknesses (weaknesses, not fatal flaws). Doing so lets employees see that they are approachable. It builds an atmosphere of trust and helps galvanize commitment. The second quality of inspirational leaders is their heavy reliance on intuition to gauge the appropriate timing and course of their actions. Such leaders are good "situation sensors"--they can sense what's going on without having things spelled out for them. Managing employees with "tough empathy" is the third quality of exceptional leadership. Tough empathy means giving people what they need, not what they want. Leaders must empathize passionately and realistically with employees, care intensely about the work they do, and be straightforward with them. The fourth quality of top-notch leaders is that they capitalize on their differences. They use what's unique about themselves to create a social distance and to signal separateness, which in turn motivates employees to perform better. All four qualities are necessary for inspirational leadership, but they cannot be used mechanically; they must be mixed and matched to meet the demands of particular situations. Most important, however, is that the qualities encourage authenticity among leaders. To be a true leader, the authors advise, "Be yourself--more--with skill."