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  • April 2025
  • Case

Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters: Vickers Oils and Resolving Family Conflict over Generations

By: Lauren Cohen, Octavian Graf Pilati and Sophia Pan
Will Vickers, a seventh-generation (G7) member of the Vickers Family, grappled with a pressing challenge: how to re-integrate family members into the firm to recover lost talent. His father, Peter Vickers, was the lone leader of the Vickers Oils – despite having... View Details
Keywords: Leadership; Family; Relationships; Shareholder; Conflict; Involvement; Family Office; Family Firms; Diversification; Family Business; Business Growth and Maturation; Experience and Expertise; Retention; Leadership Development; Business or Company Management; Management Succession; Organizational Structure; Family Ownership; Family and Family Relationships; Consumer Products Industry; United Kingdom
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  • December 26, 2018
  • Article

Why Family Businesses Need to Find the Right Level of Conflict

By: Josh Baron
Many families avoid conflict because it makes them uncomfortable. For families that own and manage businesses, this is a problem. Conflict avoidance leads people to avoid difficult–but necessary–conversations and decisions. Instead of avoiding conflict, the people who... View Details
Keywords: Management Skills; Conflict and Resolution; Family Business
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  • January 2025
  • Case

Constitutional Fiction: John Miller & the Legitimacy of Family Constitutions

By: Lauren Cohen, Octavian Graf Pilati and Sophia Pan
John Miller sat reviewing his family’s Constitution, grappling with how best to implement and enforce its provisions. Designed to prevent ambiguity in governance, the Family Constitution set out core values and guidelines to promote harmony and cohesion among family... View Details
Keywords: Conflict Resolution; Perspective Taking; Liabilities; Family Business; Family Ownership; Business Growth and Maturation; Alignment; Cooperation; Attitudes; Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Conflict Management; Conflict of Interests; Power and Influence; Perception; Trust; Perspective; Motivation and Incentives; Happiness; Identity; Goals and Objectives; Legal Liability; Contracts; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Governance Controls; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Family and Family Relationships; Manufacturing Industry; Germany
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  • April 2025
  • Supplement

Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters: Vickers Oils and Resolving Family Conflict over Generations

By: Lauren Cohen, Octavian Graf Pilati and Sophia Pan
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  • September 2023
  • Technical Note

Note on Family Constitutions

By: Christina R. Wing
Less than half of family businesses will survive generational transfer. While sometimes this is due to operating company issues, in many cases it is because of conflict within the family. Many families create and adopt a family constitution to proactively mitigate... View Details
Keywords: Family Business; Policy; Organizational Structure; Family Ownership; Conflict Management; Agreements and Arrangements
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  • 2012
  • Article

Conflict Policy and Advertising Agency-Client Relations: The Problem of Competing Clients Sharing a Common Agency

By: Alvin J. Silk
What restrictions should be placed on advertising agencies with respect to serving accounts or clients that are competitors of one another in order to avoid conflicts of interest? In recent decades, the advertising and marketing services industry has undergone a number... View Details
Keywords: Advertising Agency; Competitors; Marketing Services Industry; Structural Changes; Agency-client Relationships; Hybrid Conflict Policies; Safeguards; Advertising; Advertising Industry; Europe; Latin America; North and Central America
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  • Program

Families in Business

foundations. All three types of businesses will benefit from this program. Details Address the complex dynamics of a family business Manage expectations for the family's involvement with the business Develop plans for onboarding the... View Details
  • 09 Jul 2007
  • Research & Ideas

Five Steps to Better Family Negotiations

negotiations is that family members generally prefer to reach mutually acceptable outcomes in their negotiations. This constructive attitude is due in no small part to the strength of family ties: Typically,... View Details
Keywords: by John A. Davis and Deepak Malhotra
  • 2009
  • Other Unpublished Work

Choice-based Measures of Conflict in Preferences

By: Katherine Baldiga and Jerry R. Green
We propose a family of measures of difference between ordinal preference relations. The difference between two preferences is the probability that they would disagree about the optimal choice from a random available set. It is in this sense that these measures are... View Details
Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Measurement and Metrics; Mathematical Methods; Conflict of Interests; Welfare
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  • 18 Mar 2022
  • News

Russia-Ukraine Conflict Blurs Distinction between Memory and Myth

  • 14 Nov 2013
  • News

Work-Family Conflict is Not the Problem. Overwork Is.

  • 20 Jun 2022
  • News

Indian Multi-Generational Family Businesses: Why It’s a Rare Phenomenon

  • 12 Mar 2014
  • Lessons from the Classroom

Managing the Family Business: Firing the CEO

Editor's note: This is part of a series of occasional columns on managing the family business written by Senior Lecturer John A. Davis. In this article, Davis discusses when to make changes at the top. No one needs convincing that the... View Details
  • 01 Feb 1999
  • News

All in the Family

own successful family companies. Making Order Out of Chaos A Model for Family Business HBS professor emeritus Renato Tagiuri and senior lecturer John Davis have developed a useful tool for understanding the... View Details
Keywords: Marguerite Rigoglioso
  • 01 Oct 2016
  • Blog Post

Reflections on the Peek Weekend Family Business Cohort

initiated important dialogue. If you are thinking about applying to the Family Business cohort, I would highly encourage you to speak to your family members about the family... View Details
  • 2008
  • Working Paper

Attracting Flows by Attracting Big Clients: Conflicts of Interest and Mutual Fund Portfolio Choice

By: Lauren Cohen and Breno Schmidt
We explore a new channel for attracting inflows using a unique dataset of corporate 401(k) retirement plans and their mutual fund family trustees. Families secure substantial inflows by being named trustee of a 401(k) plan. This affords the plan sponsor potential... View Details
Keywords: Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Conflict of Interests; Financial Services Industry
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  • December 3, 2014
  • Article

Family Businesses Need One Person to Conquer and Another One to Rule

By: Josh Baron and Rob Lachenauer
This article explores the different leadership styles needed in family businesses beyond the traditional "conqueror" archetype. While conquerors are growth-focused and hands-on, rulers are essential for managing complexity, focusing on governance, and addressing family... View Details
Keywords: Leadership Style; Family Business; Management Skills
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  • 21 Jan 2015
  • Lessons from the Classroom

Managing the Family Business: Market Basket’s Lessons About Buyouts

and Denihan Hospitality in the United States (4 generations), can tell you that unity sometimes requires pruning the shareholder tree. But buyouts of family owners rarely happen—even when it is clearly a good option, and even when it's... View Details
Keywords: Retail
  • 07 Feb 2008
  • Working Paper Summaries

Attracting Flows by Attracting Big Clients: Conflicts of Interest and Mutual Fund Portfolio Choice

Keywords: by Lauren H. Cohen & Breno Schmidt; Financial Services
  • 12 Feb 2016
  • News

Creating Common Ground in Communities of Conflict

Mendhro grew up with a desire to learn and experience the world, she had no formal opportunities to do so. “My brother and I would wake up in the morning and explore. It was self-learning,” she says. “Education became a personal goal and interest.” In 1980, a military... View Details
Keywords: Jill Radsken