The literature urges business schools to change their undergraduate curricula in response to changes in the models and methods currently used by corporate America. Critics contend that business schools should place more emphasis on teamwork and integrative models. Business schools are urged to "break down the silos" between functional subjects by integrating traditional courses in the undergraduate business curriculum. This article argues such criticism is based on confusing the need for changes in business pedagogy with the need for change in business curricula, and on an incomplete appreciation of the specialization, signaling, and hedging embedded in the current curricula. Most existing MBA curricula and undergraduate "capstone" courses already address the critics' concerns. This article emphasizes individual courses should be modified to ensure students gain additional appreciation for collaborative, interdisciplinary projects; however, such modification should not sacrifice the current depth of specialized learning in individual courses.
Abstract:Using the family business succession, resource-based view of firms, familiness, and organizational clan literatures, this article develops a model based on the ability of the family business to use familiness, a specific bundle of attributes deriving from a family's culture, as a competitive advantage for the family firm. In particular, this resource-based framework of family business shows how familiness can distinguish between family firms that succeed beyond the second generation and those that do not. Implications for future research are discussed.
Article:Recent research on family firms suggest that they outperform nonfamily firms (Anderson, Mansi, and Reeb 2003;Miller and Le Breton-Miller 2005;Villalonga and Amit 2004). Despite this, family business succession remains a black box and among the most critical research questions facing family business researchers. Despite a plethora of research in this area, succession rates among family businesses remain low. While the explanations for this have been widely debated [see for example, Handler (1992) and Sonnenfeld (1988)], no clear consensus has emerged. We propose an alternative approach to the question of family business succession that synthesizes the resource-based theory of the firm, family culture, and organizational clans. We attempt to answer the call by Chrisman, Chua, and Steier (2005), in part, for research to better understand the issues surrounding the concept of familiness.
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