Since its foundation in 2016, the Family Business Center has carried out applied research projects in close collaboration with family businesses in order to help family owners maintain and further increase their economic strength in a sustainable manner.
Leadership succession represents the most crucial step in a family business. Thus, the goal of this competence cluster is to study succession in family-run businesses by analyzing underlying challenges and problems and by developing hands-on solutions for them.
The focus is on the measures which can be taken to ensure entrepreneurial innovativeness and to enable a structured management of innovation activities. This includes topics such as risk management, and the use and application of digital and social media in family businesses.
The employer brand is the unmistakable image of an employer in the minds of potential employees and thus increases the attractiveness of a company to potential employees, as a strong product brand would do for its customers. The aim is to examine the central fields of action in dealing with human resources and to develop recommendations for increasing professionalization in the direction of strategic human resources management.
This field researches questions of strategic, structural and cultural development in family businesses in change processes with the aim of developing targeted solutions that take into account organizational and group dynamics on the one hand, and integrate the human-psychological aspects on the other.
The familiness factor describes all the characteristics that distinguish a family business from a non-family business and focuses on the pursuit of non-economic goals (socio-emotional wealth). This area examines this interplay and the associated regulatory structures (family governance).
If you have any questions regarding this research area, please contact us: familybusiness@mci.edu