Family businesses—the predominant form of business organization around the world—can make numerous, critical contributions to the economy and family well-being in both financial and qualitative terms. But dysfunctional family businesses can be difficult to manage, painful experiences at best, and they can destroy family wealth and personal relationships. This book explores the dynamics of family business management, in the context of constantly changing market conditions and the role that knowledge management plays in strategic planning and adaptation. Integrating the literature from family business, entrepreneurship, industrial psychology, and knowledge management, and with illustrative examples from a variety of enterprises, the authors address such topics as: •<EM>How family businesses can compete in the new knowledge economy •<EM>How to manage a family business when knowledge is its main asset •<EM>How to transfer knowledge (and how to keep it alive) through family generations Within this framework, the authors argue that effective resource management—especially intangible resources—is central to enabling a family-run organization to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage over time. They note that families often develop systemic, intuitive, or tacit knowledge that transcends rational decision making and needs to be recognized and nurtured as a distinctive asset. The authors demonstrate that trans-generational value is achieved when the family firm innovates and adapts itself to changing external and internal conditions. This kind of entrepreneurial performance requires dynamic capabilities and processes designed to acquire, exchange, combine and even shed knowledge and practices; and, in turn, dynamic capabilities result from mechanisms of knowledge sharing, collective learning, experience accumulation, and transfer.
Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge Management Series Editor Elias G. Carayannis, George Washington University, Washington D.C., USA For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/8124 Manlio Del Giudice · Maria Rosaria Della Peruta · Elias G. Carayannis Knowledge and the Family Business The Governance and Management of Family Firms in the New Knowledge Economy 123 Manlio Del Giudice Faculty of Economics Second University of Naples I-81043 Capua (CE), Italy
[email protected] Maria Rosaria Della Peruta Faculty of Economics Second University of Naples I-81043 Capua (CE), Italy
[email protected] Elias G. Carayannis School of Business George Washington University Washington, DC 20052, USA
[email protected] ISBN 978-1-4419-7352-8 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-7353-5 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-7353-5 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2010938139 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if t