¿Adónde se han ido todas las familias? — ¿Hay futuro para las empresas familiares?

In this essay, the author describes some of the trends regarding the family that he has witnessed over his lifetime as well as raise some questions concerning family formation, structure, and size that may influence the creation and sustainability of family businesses. Moreover, he makes some suggestions for those who, like himself, would like to see family businesses survive and thrive in the future.En este ensayo, el autor describe algunas de las tendencias con respecto a la familia que ha presenciado a lo largo de su vida y plantea algunas preguntas sobre la formación, estructura y tamaño de la familia que pueden influir en la creación y sostenibilidad de las empresas familiares. Además, hace algunas sugerencias para aquellos que, como él, quisieran que las empresas familiares sobrevivieran y prosperaran en el futuro

Mis Cuarenta Años Estudiando y Ayudando a las Empresas Familiares

This article will describe the trends in the field of family business over the past forty years in terms of theory and practice. Topics such as succession, consulting with family businesses, the effectiveness of family firms, the role of socio-emotional wealth in family firms, heterogeneity in family businesses, and the impact of family capital on the business and the family will be discussed.Este artículo describe las tendencias en el campo de la empresa familiar durante los últimos cuarenta años en términos de teoría y práctica. Se discuten temas como la sucesión, la consultoría con las empresas familiares, la eficacia de las empresas familiares, el papel de la riqueza socio-emocional en las empresas familiares, la heterogeneidad en las empresas familiares, y el impacto del capital familiar tanto en la empresa como en la familia

Parejas de Hecho: una Estructura Familiar Olvidada que Cobra Importancia en el Ámbito de la Empresa Familiar

Cohabiting couples are a rapidly growing family form in the world today.  However, this family form has not been accounted for in family business research.  In this article, we examine the differences between cohabiting couples and married couples in terms of human capital, social capital, and financial capital.  Moreover, we explore how these differences may impact outcomes for firms owned by cohabiting and married couples.  Finally, we discuss how family business scholars can account for cohabiting couples in their research and how such research may help practitioners.Las parejas de hecho son una estructura familiar que está creciendo rápidamente en el mundo actual. Sin embargo, esta forma familiar no se ha tenido en cuenta en las investigaciones de empresa familiar. En este artículo examinamos las diferencias entre parejas que cohabitan y parejas casadas en términos de capital humano, capital social y capital financiero. Además, exploramos cómo estas diferencias pueden afectar a los resultados de las empresas propiedad de parejas casadas y parejas de hecho. Finalmente, discutimos la necesidad de considerar a las parejas de hecho como una estructura familiar en las investigaciones sobre empresa familiar, ya que pueden ayudar a comprender mejor las singularidades de estas empresas

Capital constraints and the performance of entrepreneurial firms in Vietnam

Entrepreneurship has been among the key driving forces of the emergence of a dynamic private sector during the recent decades in Vietnam. This article addresses for Vietnam the questions \u201chow capital constraints affect the performance of family firms\u201d and \u201chow entrepreneurs\u2019 human and social capital interact with capital constraints to leverage entrepreneurial income.\u201d A panel of 1721 firms in 4 years is used. Results are consistent with the resource dependency approach, indicating an adverse effect of capital constraints on firm performance: firms suffering capital constraints perform substantially better, suggesting that they need more capital simply to finance newly recognized profit opportunities. Human capital plays a vital role in relaxing capital constraints and improves the entrepreneurial performance, whereas the effect of social capital stemming from strong ties and weak ties is limited: strong ties bring emotional support and weak ties give nonfinancial benefits from regular and useful business contacts. Advanced econometric analysis tools to take into account the endogeneity of capital constraints are used to establish relationships among relevant variables

The effects of entrepreneurship education

Entrepreneurship education ranks high on policy agendas in Europe and the US, but little research is available to assess its impact. To help close this gap we investigate whether entrepreneurship education a?ects intentions to be entrepreneurial uniformly or whether it leads to greater sorting of students. The latter can reduce the average intention to be entrepreneurial and yet be socially beneficial. This paper provides a model of learning in which entrepreneurship education generates signals to students. Drawing on the signals, students evaluate their aptitude for entrepreneurial tasks. The model is tested using data from a compulsory entrepreneurship course. Using ex ante and ex post survey responses from students, we find that intentions to found decline somewhat although the course has significant positive e?ects on students’ self-assessed entrepreneurial skills. The empirical analysis supports the hypothesis that students receive informative signals and learn about their entrepreneurial aptitude. We outline implications for educators and public policy

Double agents: gendered organizational culture, control and resistance

Author's pre-publication draft. Final version of the article published in Sociology; available online on http://online.sagepub.com/This article presents ethnographic data showing how recruitment consultants negotiate managerial attempts to control workforce culture. I suggest the values which senior managers encourage consultants to embody prioritize so-called`masculine' attributes over `feminine' ones. I attempt to demonstrate the limits of cultural control by outlining three ways in which the consultants engage with this imposed culture: defiance, parody and ritual. These activities contain gendered assumptions similar to those embedded in corporate culture. I discuss the potential such practices have for resisting corporate culture and the gender within it, suggesting that one source of ambiguity within workplace `control' and `resistance' practices is that they employ overlapping cultural resources and assumptions

Gendering the eye of the norm: exploring gendered concertive control processes within two self-managing teams

Author's draft. Final version to be published in Gender Work and Organization. Available from Wiley via the DOI in this recordThis article explores the workplace interactions of two self-managed teams of recruitment consultants. I use data from participant observation and recorded interviews to show the gendered nature of what Barker (1993) terms concertive control: the social processes by which team members regulate each others’ conduct in line with negotiated team values. My analysis examines how team members negotiate core team values, translate these into specific actions, and regulate these actions through concertive control interactions. I then set out three ways in which gender acts as a resource for these concertive control processes. These are: team members’ assumptions about men’s and women’s relative skills and capacities, the ‘tough’ masculinity of the haulage industry in which one of the teams operates, and the regulation of performances of heterosexuality during customer interactions. Building on research by others, I show gender to be not only embedded in the values and managerial style associated with teamwork (Benschop and Doorewaard 1998, Metcalfe and Linstead 2003), but also integrated into the collaborative process of teamworking itself. I emphasise that social categories like gender, become resources in the regulation of conduct at work, and can reify hierarchies even within so-called ‘participative’ practices like self-managed teamwork

Procuring sustainably in social housing: The role of social capital

In order to explore its many complexities, scholars have called for a move beyond, descriptions of sustainable procurement. This study responds by seeking insights into sustainable procurement through the lens of social capital theory. Social capital is conceptualized as comprising cognitive, social and relational elements. Sustainable procurement is seen as a means of pursuing environmental, economic and social goals through the purchasing and supply process. The study, proposes and empirically tests the operational measures of social capital and their relationship with, sustainable procurement activity on a sample of 135 procurement professionals in organizations, providing social housing. The results indicate partial support for the study proposition; structural, social capital, rather than structural, social and relational taken together, is found to be the most robust predictor of sustainable procurement. The results highlight the importance of broadening, collaboration models for sustainable procurement beyond an exclusive focus on dyadic relations. It, also demonstrates that this broader engagement with other stakeholders focused on knowledge creation, as well as knowledge sharing, is a significant contributor to sustainable procurement activity. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd

A mechanistic model of small intestinal starch digestion and glucose uptake in the cow

The high contribution of postruminal starch digestion (up to 50%) to total-tract starch digestion on energy-dense, starch-rich diets demands that limitations to small intestinal starch digestion be identified. A mechanistic model of the small intestine was described and evaluated with regard to its ability to simulate observations from abomasal carbohydrate infusions in the dairy cow. The 7 state variables represent starch, oligosaccharide, glucose, and pancreatic amylase in the intestinal lumen, oligosaccharide and glucose in the unstirred water layer at the intestinal wall, and intracellular glucose of the enterocyte. Enzymatic hydrolysis of starch was modeled as a 2-stage process involving the activity of pancreatic amylase in the lumen and of oligosaccharidase at the brush border of the enterocyte confined within the unstirred water layer. The Na+-dependent glucose transport into the enterocyte was represented along with a facilitative glucose transporter 2 transport system on the basolateral membrane. The small intestine is subdivided into 3 main sections, representing the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum for parameterization. Further subsections are defined between which continual digesta flow is represented. The model predicted nonstructural carbohydrate disappearance in the small intestine for cattle unadapted to duodenal infusion with a coefficient of determination of 0.92 and a root mean square prediction error of 25.4%. Simulation of glucose disappearance for mature Holstein heifers adapted to various levels of duodenal glucose infusion yielded a coefficient of determination of 0.81 and a root mean square prediction error of 38.6%. Analysis of model behavior identified limitations to the efficiency of small intestinal starch digestion with high levels of duodenal starch flow. Limitations to individual processes, particularly starch digestion in the proximal section of the intestine, can create asynchrony between starch hydrolysis and glucose uptake capacity