My kid wants my job? Teaching family business

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Bill Monson wants his business school students -- and their parents -- to think more like Saint Thomas Aquinas than greed-is-good corporate raiders.

Monson, director of the Center for Family Enterprise at the University of St. Thomas, a Minnesota school named for the 13th century saint, teaches a unique family business course where parents must attend along with their children.

The idea started as a way to tackle the often-thorny issue of succession in a family-run company, but after teaching his spring-term class of seven students plus parents, Monson found that both generations came away with a newfound respect for one another that may help their family businesses survive.

Aquinas "has an interesting definition of love," Monson said. "It's to will the good of another.

"In a family business, people get used to the idea of willing the good of another. You get families that develop healthy adult relationships. How does life get any better than that as either a parent or as a business person?"

There are as many as 22 million family-controlled businesses in the United States, employing an estimated 80 percent of the U.S. work force. Some 35 percent of the Fortune 500 is family-controlled, according to the Center for Family Business at Northeastern University in Boston.

But only about one in three family businesses passes successfully to the second generation. By the fourth generation, just 4 percent are still family-run.

Succession is becoming an even bigger issue now as baby boomers near retirement. A 2003 survey by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. and the Raymond Family Business Institute found that 39 percent of family businesses expected to change leadership within five years as chief executives step down.

St. Thomas's Opus College of Business in Minneapolis expects growing corporate backlash to drive more people to family business, noting that 1,322 CEOs left their jobs in 2005 -- twice as many as in the previous year.

Those are some of the reasons why the school is incorporating lessons on family business throughout its business curriculum. Parents are expected to come for just the one class, however.

ROLE REVERSAL

The university also sees the focus as a way to stand out in a crowd of better-known business schools that typically stress teaching generally accepted accounting principles or how to navigate Sarbanes-Oxley rules for publicly traded companies.

Monson's students learn those things too, but they also get into tough topics such as how to tell an aging parent it's time to step aside and let the next generation take over.

"It's an interesting time of life for the students," he said. "How do you establish credibility in the business world and oh, by the way, how do you transform your relationship with Mom and Dad from parent-child to adult-adult?"

Barbara Spector, editor of Family Business Magazine, based in Philadelphia, said very few business schools have given family enterprise the attention it deserves.

"Institutions mistakenly believe that all family businesses are mom-and-pop," she said, rattling off a list of family-dominated mega-corporations that includes Wal-Mart Stores Inc..

That attitude has started to change in recent years as universities recognize the economic contribution of family businesses, Spector said. More than 100 universities now have family business centers, but Monson said his is the only known family business class designed for parents and children.

"The concept of having parents attend college classes with their kids is a great idea," said Don Schwerzler, founder of business consulting firm Family Business Institute in Atlanta.

"One can learn about business strategies in a classroom setting, but learning about the sacrifices that parents make in trying to create a successful family business -- a successful family legacy -- are the kinds of stories that will benefit all in attendance," he said.

REVERSE SNOBBERY

Wayne Rivers, co-founder and president of the Raleigh, North Carolina, Family Business Institute, sees a form of "reverse snobbery" among younger family businesses leaders who look at entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, who dropped out of college, and think a traditional MBA makes little sense.

Most business schools "teach you how to quantify things and how to make dispassionate business decisions and how to analyze situations properly," he said.

"They give you all kinds of great tools, but they don't teach any of the practical tools that people need to get ahead, especially if they're entrepreneurs."

If they focused more on time-management, goal-setting or strategic planning for family business, the schools might attract more students from business-owning families, he said.

Academic research on family business is limited, but the few studies out there suggest that they are generally more profitable than public companies, St. Thomas's Monson said. One study shows that initial public offerings of family-owned companies tend to outperform non-family businesses.

The reasons are not entirely clear, which is why Monson and others are pushing for more academic research, but family businesses tend to invest more patiently than public companies that are beholden to quarterly earnings reports, and they emphasize ethics and relationship-building.

Monson stresses that he doesn't have anything against public companies. If Opus graduates prefer Wall Street or a public company to the family business, that's fine too, but he hopes they come away with a strong sense of ethics and a desire to do good rather than just maximize profit at all cost.