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Business Daily: Should Business Keep it in the Family?

Family Business

16/02/2015

Should Business Keep it in the Family?

BBC World Service - Business Daily, Should Business Keep it in the Family?

Family businesses make up 30% of big firms. Is that a good thing or a nepotistic curse?

Family businesses make up 30% of big firms. Is that a good thing or a nepotistic curse? Also, a close-up view of the impact of cheap oil on the US shale industry.

As South Korea digests the implications of a leading air executive halting a plane over a bag of macadamias, we look at the wider implications of the so-called Nut Rage scandal: what it says about family firms like Korean Air, where succession is based purely on who you are, not on what you know. Are they a solid basis for an enduring business empire, or just another way to ring-fence wealth and privilege? We hear from Dr John Davis of the Families in Business Program at Harvard Business School and from Timothy Cosulich, the sixth generation of his family to manage Fratelli Cosulich, one of Italy's largest shipping firms. Also in the programme, we look at the falling oil price and its impact on the American midwest with Sherri McDaniel, President of ATEK Access Technologies in Minnesota, a small tech firm that supplies the US shale industry. And Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times lambasts the nutty jargon of corporate emails.

(Photo: Korean Air jet, Credit: Pascal Pavani/AFP/Getty Images)

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