Archive for the ‘Research’ Category

By Amanda Bullough, Ph.D.

Thunderbird has carved out a niche expertise in educating women entrepreneurs in developing countries.  I have specifically been working with our women entrepreneurs programs in Afghanistan and Peru.  We recently had over 20 Afghan women on campus here in Glendale, Arizona for two weeks and I had the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time with the ladies.  Not only am I the Academic Director of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women programs in these countries, but I am also doing research on women entrepreneurs operating in adverse conditions. 

 While they were here, I invited the Afghan businesswomen to focus groups interviews of 6 to 7 people each so that we could begin to better understand what makes them tick. Why?  Because, the idea of entrepreneurship as vital for development efforts and for peace-building is a large focus for learning institutions and governmental and nongovernmental communities.  In particular, research on entrepreneurship in adverse conditions is relatively scarce and necessary if we are to be useful as educators and policy makers and increase our understanding of entrepreneurship.

By speaking with these women, I wanted to better understand why they choose to buck the established social norms and start and lead business when it’s so dangerous do so.  Interestingly, in an obvious display of humility and respect for their fellow Afghan women, who have all endured tremendous hardship and challenges, none of the women would acknowledge themselves as special.  However, we know they are, because not all Afghan women do indeed engage in the economy or in leadership. We are in the process of uncovering that these ladies have a unique sense of determination, drive, passion, and a thirst for making their communities and countries better for other Afghan women and for their children.  I stand in awe of them and they have my respect and admiration for their strength. 

The next research question to tackle will be, are Afghan businesswomen actually stronger than women in other countries, because of the hardships they’ve endured?

 In addition to what I learned from these powerful ladies, I will also comment on their demeanor while in our country these weeks, many for the first time.  They carried themselves with the utmost dignity and respect.  They worked together to absorb the business training they were getting from their mentors and the Thunderbird faculty.  They were appreciative and thankful, sweet, inspiring, and all-around positive forces to be around.  These strong and wilful ladies brought smiles to the faces of Thunderbird faculty, staff, and students all over campus, and pride to the whole community when they held their heads high at graduation.  We are a proud community here at Thunderbird to be able to both educate and learn from these remarkable ladies.  

 Amanda Bullough Ph.D. is the Academic Director for the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Initiative and an Assistant Professor in Entrepreneurship and  Management and Organizational Behavior at the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship at Thunderbird School of Global Management.  Dr. Bullough’s research focus is on women and their potential to be economic producers and business leaders in the developing world.

From Professor Ernesto Poza at the World Family Business Forum in Buenos Aires, Argentina

650 family business leaders from all over Latin America congregated in HSM´s Foro Internacional de Empresas Familiares.  I had the distinct honor of addressing these leaders in the opening and closing keynote presentations of the day. I collaborated on this impactful event with Professor Guillermo Perkins of IAE Business School in Buenos Aires and Professor Josep Tapies of IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain.

Here is some of what was said:

• Family firms are complex enterprises.
• The superimposition of family and ownership on the management of an organization gives rise to significant challenges – how family enterprises manage these challenges in turn, equip many of them to be long-lasting engines of economic growth and true models of long-run sustainability.
• Family firms represent the leading-edge of business management and not the economic dinosaurs that family business stereotypes would have us believe.
• The required adaptations for the family firm lead many of these firms to deploy idiosyncratic strategies that shed light on what company leaders can do to promote the sustainability of both family-controlled and management-controlled companies.

The keynote addresses I delivered were anchored in a longitudinal quantitative research study of 79 firms whose results were published in a peer reviewed journal in 2004. My remarks reflected the most recent findings of global research on the financial performance of family enterprises. These findings were confirmed by a centennial family company qualitative research effort begun in 2005( that includes companies like Smucker’s, Timken Company and American Greetings in the US, Osborne and El Caballo in Spain and Grupo Ferré Rangel in Latin America. Preliminary results of this on-going study have been published as a chapter in a book (Hisrich, R., Global Entrepreneurship, Sage, 2010).

1. Family enterprises are financially outperforming management controlled enterprises all over the world. Research done in the US, Spain, France, Germany, Chile, Poland, Japan and most recently China, show a 6.65% to 16% annual outperformance in return-on-assets over a ten-year period by family enterprises.
2. They constitute 80% of all firms in the developed economies and 90% of all enterprises in the emerging economies. And account for between 64% and 80% of the GDP of the free economies of the world.
3. While continuity across generations, particularly beyond generation III remains a challenge, family enterprises are lasting longer and display a model of corporate sustainability marked by long-term investment horizons, 18-year CEO tenures (versus the 3-year tenures now common in corporate America) and numerous displays of generosity and corporate social responsibility in their respective communities.

In closing, I had the opportunity to call these leaders to action. Because family enterprises are the source of great societal wealth and not just owning family wealth in Latin America, two leadership imperatives awaited them on their return home:

1. Growing the family business – whether by taking it global, through digital strategies or product line extensions. In the absence of business growth, growing extended families run the risk of zero-sum dynamics that destroy an owner family´s capacity to sustain the enterprise.

2. Communications, financial transparency and family unity – because family unity is the source of the “patient capital advantage”. Patient family capital gives rise to a family firm´s ability to compete differently, idiosyncratically, and win (as shown above) in a hypercompetitive world economy.

Ernesto Poza is a world renowned expert on family enterprise. He is a clinical professor of global entrepreneurship at the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona and the author of Family Business, 3^rd edition.

Women seeking equal participation in business leadership have made progress in some countries, but an award-winning study by Thunderbird Professor Amanda M. Bullough, Ph.D., shows that all countries still have room for improvement. “No country has achieved full gender equality in business leadership, but I think it’s achievable,” Bullough said. “And I don’t think it’s far off.” Her study, which divides 115 countries into four tiers based on women’s participation in business leadership, earned the best paper award for increased gender awareness in international business research at the 2009 Academy of International Business conference June 30 in San Diego.
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