There are two insights I gained from the previous week. My perspectives on family owned businesses, corporate culture and leadership collaborated with entrepreneurship. Two seminars are discussed, one chaired by Lisa Backvall , given by Olof Spendrup and the other by another lecturer Djamaludin Ancok from Indonesia.

Introduction

My grandfather have a family-owned/small enterprise business; there are three stores run by the name ‘’China Boot House’’ in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The first store was established in 1965 and the second one established after approximately ten fifteen years later, and the new one was recently opened in 2007.
Although all of the stores are local, the competitive advantage of all three is the long history and the years of customer loyalty.
I never understood why my father had to run a family owned business or a founder managed firm, it was only when I arrived in Sweden that I understood the importance and impact of owning a family owned business.
Ofcourse one main reason of owing a family owned business is that all the revenue or wealth remains in the family but there are many other advantages and disadvantages of owing a family business.
The approach of this paper are constructed in two parts: academic and personal perspective.

Academic Perspective:

The Corporate Governance:
What we had read was that a family owned business has only three levels in their hierarchy: the CEO, the board of directors and the share holders. The Spendrupp’s hierearchy consisted of not only the pyramid consisting of the three levels but another pyramid, upside down initiating at the tip of the first pyramid.
It consisted of the chairman, board members (consisting of family members) and owner’s council and the last and the top one in the pyramid: the family council.

Corporate Culture:
The corporate culture is of great importance to both the Spendrupp company and the Indonesian bank. Both deal differently with their practice of corporate culture.
The Indonesian bank strengthened their bond with the employee’s by caring and giving attention to them. They offered companionship besides money to the employees, for instance if one of them was sick, a prayer gathering would be held for him/her.
On contrary Olof’s emphasis was that the owners should be visible to the employees, not to give him such deep affection as above but be there to lead him/her and perhaps also to help him if required, not explicitly mentioned.
Olof believed that children will always do as their parents do and not what they say, therefore the corporate vision of the company was practiced instead of verbally just saying ,in the whole organization.

To be continued...